soldier or sailor--looking strange in his uniform, even after the custom
of several years--emerges from those passages; or, more rarely, a black
gentleman, stricken in years, and cased in shining broadcloth, walks
solidly down the brick sidewalk, cane in hand,--a vision of serene
self-complacency, and so plainly the expression of virtuous public
sentiment that the great colored louts, innocent enough till then in
their idleness, are taken with a sudden sense of depravity, and loaf
guiltily up against the house-walls. At the same moment, perhaps, a
young damsel, amorously scuffling with an admirer through one of the low
open windows, suspends the strife, and bids him,--"Go along now, do!"
More rarely yet than the gentleman described, one may see a white girl
among the dark neighbors, whose frowsy head is uncovered, and whose
sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and who, though no doubt quite at
home, looks as strange there as that pale anomaly which may sometimes be
seen among a crew of blackbirds.

An air not so much of decay as of unthrift, and yet hardly of unthrift,
seems to prevail in the neighborhood, which has none of the aggressive
and impudent squalor of an Irish quarter, and none of the surly
wickedness of a low American street. A gayety not born of the things
that bring its serious joy to the true New England heart--a ragged
gayety, which comes of summer in the blood, and not in the pocket or the
conscience, and which affects the countenance and the whole demeanor,
setting the feet to some inward music, and at times bursting into a line
of song or a child-like and irresponsible laugh--gives tone to the
visible life, and wakens a very friendly spirit in the passer, who
somehow thinks there of a milder climate, and is half persuaded that the
orange-peel on the side-walks came from fruit grown in the soft
atmosphere of those back courts.