MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



houses, succeeded by a foul sluiceway, that 

 runs along the reeking backs of shops, and 

 ends presently in gloom. A stranger might 

 consider it the darkness of a tunnel, if he did 

 not perceive that the railway train had stopped ; 

 and presently catch faint images of a sooty 

 stairway, begrimed with smoke — up and down 

 which dim figures pass to and fro, and from 

 the foot of which, and the side of which, and 

 all around which, a score of belching voices 

 break out in a passionate chorus of shouts; as 

 the eye gains upon the sootiness and gloom, 

 it makes out the wispy, wavy lines of a few 

 whips moving back and forth amid the uproar 

 of voices; it lights presently upon the star of 

 a policeman, who seems altogether in his ele- 

 ment in the midst of the hurly-burly. Be- 

 cloaked and shawled figures enter and pass 

 through the carriages; they may be black, or 

 white, or gray, or kinsfolk — you see nothing 

 but becloaked figures passing through; port- 

 manteaus fall with a slump, and huge dressing 

 cases fall with a slam, upon what seems, by 

 the ear, to be pavement; luggage trucks keep 

 up an uneasy rattle; brakemen somewhere in 

 still lower depths strike dinning blows upon the 

 wheels, to test their soundness; newsboys, 

 moving about the murky shades like piebald 



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