Violets and Other Tales

								

On the busiest thoroughfares in the city, just in the busiest part,
between two of the most crowded and conservative of cross-streets, lies
this alley of Latinism. One might almost pass it hurriedly, avoiding the
crowds that cluster at this section of the streets, but upon turning
into a narrow section, stone-paved, the place is entered, appearing to
end one square distant, seeming to bar itself from the larger buildings
by an aimless sort of iron affair, part railing, part posts. There is a
conservative book-store at the entrance on one side, and an even more
harmless clothing store on the other; then comes a saloon with many
blind doors, behind which are vistas of tables, crowded and crowded with
men drinking beer out of "globes," large, round, moony, common affairs.
There is a dingy, pension-claim office, with cripples and
sorrowful-looking women in black, sitting about on rickety chairs.
Somehow, there is always an impression with me that the mourning dress
and mournful looks are put on to impress the dispenser and adjuster. It
is wicked, but what can one do if impressions come?
There are more little cuddies of places, dye-shops, tailors, and
nondescript corners that seem to have no possible mission on earth and
are sadly conscious of their aimlessness. Then the railing is reached,
and the alley instead of ending has merely given itself an angular twist
to the right, and extends three squares further, to a great, pale green
dome, and stately entrance.
The calmly-thinking, quietly-laboring, cool and conservative world is
for the nonce left behind. With the first stepping across Customhouse
street, the place widens architecturally, and the atmosphere, too, seems
impregnated with a sort of mental freedom, conducive to dangerous
theorizing and broody reflections on the inequality of the classes. The
sun shines in a strip in the centre, yellow and elusive, like gold;
someone is rattling a gay galop on a piano somewhere; there is a sound
of mens' voices in a heated discussion, a long whiff of pipe-smoke
trails through the sunlight from the bar-room; the clink of glasses, the
chink of silver, and the high treble of a woman's voice scolding a
refractory child, mingle in incongruous melody.
Two-story houses all along; the first floor divided into cuddies, here a
paper store, displaying ten-cent novels of detective stories with
impossible cuts, illustrating impossible situations of the plot;
dye-shops, jewelers, tailors, tin-smiths, cook-shops, intelligence
offices--many of these, and some newspaper offices. On the second floor,
balconies, dingy, iron-railed, with sickly box-plants, and decrepit
garments airing and being turned and tended by dishevelled, slip-shod
women. Lodging-houses these, some of them, but one is forced to wonder
why do the tenants sun their clothes so often? The lines stretched from
posts to posts seem always filled with airing garments. Is it economy?