at
the intelligence office, which is in one of those streets chiefly
inhabited by the orphaned children and grandchildren of slavery. To tell
the truth these orphans do not seem to grieve much for their
bereavement, but lead a life of joyous, and rather indolent oblivion in
their quarter of the city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and
down the street by which the Charlesbridge cars arrive,--the young with
a harmless swagger, and the old with the generic limp which our Autocrat
has already noted as attending advanced years in their race.... 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 upward 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 frowsy head is uncovered, and whose
sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and who, though no doubt quite at
home, looks as strange there as that pale anomaly which may sometimes be
seen among a crew of blackbirds.

An air not so much of decay as of unthrift, and yet hardly of unthrift,
seems to prevail in the neighborhood, which has none of