COMPARATIVE STREET-POVERTY. 71 



it from America. We were much pleased with some of the 

 public gardens and pleasure-grounds that we visited, and 

 when we return here I may give you some account of them. 

 I meant to have said a little more about the style of building 

 in the newer and extending parts of the city ; it did not differ 

 much, however, from what you might see at home, in some 

 of the suburbs of Boston for instance. 



It would be more strange to you to see long, narrow 

 streets, full from one end to the other, of the poorest-looking 

 people you ever saw, women and children only, the men 

 being off at work, I suppose, sitting, lounging, leaning on the 

 door-steps and side- walks, smoking, knitting, and chatting; 

 the boys playing ball in the street, or marbles on the flagging ; 

 no break in the line of tall, dreary houses, but strings of 

 clothes hung across from opposite second-story windows to 

 dry ; all dwellings, except a few cellar, beer, or junk shops. 

 You can see nothing like such a dead mass of pure poverty 

 in the worst quarter of our worst city. In New York, such 

 a street would be ten times as filthy and stinking, and ten 

 times as lively ; in the middle of it there would be a large 

 fair building, set a little back (would that I could say with a 

 few roods of green turf and shrubbery between it and the 

 gutter in which the children are playing), with the inscription 

 upon it, &quot; Public Free School ;&quot; across from the windows 

 would be a banner with the &quot; Democratic Republican Nomi 

 nations ;&quot; hand-organs would be playing, hogs squealing, per- 

 haps a stampede of firemen ; boys would be crying newspa 

 pers, and the walls would be posted with placards, appealing, 

 with whatever motive, to patriotism and duty, showing that 

 statesmen and demagogues could calculate on the people s 

 reading and thinking there. There would be gay grog-shops 

 too, with liberty poles before them, and churches and Sunday- 

 4chool rooms (with lying faces of granite-painted pine) by 



