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Suburban Sketches by William Dean Howells
page 9 of 194 (04%)
with the generic limp which our Autocrat has already noted as attending
advanced years in their race. They seem the natural human interest of a
street so largely devoted to old clothes; and the thoughtful may see a
felicity in their presence where the pawnbrokers' windows display the
forfeited pledges of improvidence, and subtly remind us that we have yet
to redeem a whole race, pawned in our needy and reckless national youth,
and still held against us by the Uncle of Injustice, who is also the
Father of Lies. How gayly are the young ladies of this race attired, as
they trip up and down the side walks, and in and out through the pendent
garments at the shop doors! They are the black pansies and marigolds and
dark-blooded dahlias among womankind. They try to assume something of our
colder race's demeanor, but even the passer on the horse-car can see that
it is not native with them, and is better pleased when they forget us, and
ungenteelly laugh in encountering friends, letting their white teeth
glitter through the generous lips that open to their ears. In the streets
branching upwards from this avenue, very little colored men and maids play
with broken or enfeebled toys, or sport on the wooden pavements of the
entrances to the inner courts. Now and then a colored 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 frowzy head is
uncovered, and whose sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and who, though
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