fathomless depths. In summer the whole front of it lay open to the
street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal
squares were set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians
absorbed in a Turkish game played on a backgammon board, their gentleness
and that of the loiterers looking on in strange contrast with their
hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. Behind this group, in the half light
of the middle interior, could be discerned an American soda-water
fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter oddly shaped bottles
containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle-shaped stove, and
on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from the period
in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; and
there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the
shadows. Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the
Arabian Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the
fat proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes.

When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed
with babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps. And in this
teeming, prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a
fat, almond eyed child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all
sorts of queer contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black
moustaches and eagle noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents,
had decided in the morning that three days' wages would since to support
their families for the week .... In the midst of the throng might be seen
occasionally the stout and comfortable and not too immaculate figure of a
shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock coat and square-topped "Derby"
hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the children who scattered out
of his path.

Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called