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?
And do the owners of the faded vests and patched coats hide in dusky
corners while their only garments are receiving the benefit of Old Sol's
cleansing rays? And are the women with the indiscriminate tresses, near
relatives, or only the landladies? It would be something worth knowing
if one could.
Plenty of saloons--great, gorgeous, gaudy places, with pianos and
swift-footed waiters, tables and cards, and men, men, men. The famous
Three Brothers' Saloon occupies a position about midway the alley, and
at its doors, the acme, the culminating point, the superlative degree of
unquietude and discontent is reached.
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