ashed bonnets, old gowns, tattered shawls; flaunting--red, blue, and
yellow, in the wind, emblematic of those poor wretches, on the opposite
side, who have pledged here their last offerings, and blazed down into
that stage of human degradation, which finds the next step the
grave--all range along, forming a picturesque but sad panorama. Mr.
Moses, the man of the eagle face, who keeps the record of death, as the
neighbors call it, sits opulently in his door, and smokes his cigar;
while his sharp-eyed daughters estimate exactly how much it is safe to
advance on the last rag some lean wretch would pledge. He will tell you
just how long that brawny harlot, passing on the opposite side, will
last, and what the few rags on her back will be worth when she is
"shoved into Potters' Field." At the sign of the "Three Martyrs" Mr.
Levy is seen, in his fashionable coat, and a massive chain falling over
his tight waistcoat, registering the names of his grotesque customers,
ticketing their little packages, and advancing each a shilling or two,
which they will soon spend at the opposite druggery. Thus bravely wages
the war. London has nothing so besotted, Paris nothing so vicious,
Naples nothing so dark and despairing, as this heathen world we pass by
so heedlessly. Beside it even the purlieus of Rome sink into
insignificance. Now run your eye along the East side of Orange street. A
sidewalk sinking in mire; a long line of one-story wooden shanties,
ready to cave-in with decay; dismal looking groceries, in which the god,
gin, is sending his victims by hundreds to the greedy graveyard;
suspicious looking dens with dingy fronts, open doors, and windows
stuffed with filthy rags--in which crimes are nightly perpetrated, and
where broken-hearted victims of seduction and neglect, seeking here a
last refuge, are held in a slavery delicacy forbids our describing; dens
where negro dancers nightly revel, and make the very air re-echo their
profaning voices; filthy lanes leading to haunts up alleys and in narrow
passages, where thieves and burglars hide their vicious heads;
mysterious looking steps leading to cavern-like cellars, where swarm and
lay prostrate wretched beings made drunk by the "devil's elixir"--all
these beset the East side of Orange street. Wasted nature, blanched and
despairing, ferments here into one terrible pool. Women in
gaudy-colored dresses, their bared breasts and brawny arms contrasting
curiously with their wicked faces, h