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;