Jews -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
They walked up to Eighteenth Street, where they took the Elevated
Railway. At Fifty-ninth Street they descended, and thence proceeded to
Lexington Avenue. On Lexington Avenue, just above Sixty-first Street,
the Kochs resided. Out on the stoops of most of the houses that they
passed, the inmates were seated, resting, gossiping, trying to
cool off--the ladies in white dresses, the gentlemen often in
their shirt-sleeves. Here and there, some of them were partaking of
refreshments; beer, sandwiches, or cheese that savored of the Rhine.
Here and there, some of them had fallen asleep. Here and there, a couple
of young folks made surreptitious love, and, consumed by inner fires,
forgot the outer heat. A pervasive odor, compounded of tobacco smoke
and eau-de-cologne, assailed the nostrils. What snatches of conversation
could be overheard, were either in German, or in English pronounced with
a strong German accent.
They rang the Kochs' door-bell, and were ushered by a white-capped,
flaxen-haired _Mädchen_ into the drawing-room.
The drawing-room was gorgeously and elaborately over-furnished. A
bewildering arabesque, in gold, vermilion, and purple, decorated the
ceiling. A dark, pseudo-æsthetic paper, bearing huge pink apricots
embossed upon a ground of olive-green, covered the walls. The gas
fixtures were of brass, wrought into an intricate design, and burnished
to the highest possible brilliancy. The globes were alternately of ruby
and emerald tinted glass. There were a good many pictures; two or three
family portraits in charcoal, and several bits of color. Of the latter,
the one above the mantelpiece was the largest. A blaze of crimson
and orange, deep-set in a massive gilt frame, it proved, on close
inspection, to be a specimen of worsted-work; and represented, as a
device embroidered upon the margin testified, the Queen of Sheba playing
before Solomon. The Queen had beautiful gambooge hair, and ultramarine
eyes. Her harp was of ivory, with strings of silver; her costume,
décolleté, of indigo velvet, trimmed profusely with handsome gold lace.
Solomon--it is to be hoped, for his own sake, that Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like this flamboyant effigy of himself. In a robe
of gold brocade, lined with scarlet satin, and bearing upon his brow
a richly bejeweled crown, that must certainly have weighed in the
neighborhood of twenty pounds, the sagacious monarch looked wretchedly
hot and uncomfortable. The rest of this apartment was in perfect
keeping. The chairs were of ebony, upholstered in stamped red velvet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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