of a rapid, undiscriminating, and
artless prosperity. There were long stretches of "ten foot" buildings,
so called on account of the single story, their height deceptively
enhanced by the superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on top of
another, announcing the merits of "Stewart's Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's
Oats, the Digestible Breakfast Food," of graphophones and "spring
heeled" shoes, tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We don't give Trading
Stamps, Our Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten foot" stores
were the repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and millinery,
and interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The
Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and
an occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here,
during those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding
spanning the window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man
in his shirt sleeves chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of
a crowd below. Then came the funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed
Hinckley Block (1872), and on the corner a modern, glorified drugstore
thrusting forth plate glass bays--two on Faber Street and three on
Stanley--filled with cameras and candy, hot water bags, throat sprays,
catarrh and kidney cures, calendars, fountain pens, stationery, and
handy alcohol lamps. Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and completing
the heterogeneous and bewildering effect of the street were long rows
of heavy hemlock trunks, unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees
bearing webs of wires. Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs,
trucks rumbled across the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches
behind startled pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness
here, Faber Street being no place to dream. By night an endless
procession moved up one sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically
at the flash-in and flash-out electric, signs that kept the breakfast
foods and ales, the safety razors, soaps, and soups incessantly in the
minds of a fickle public.

Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved
roadway between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses.
Even in bright weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark,
misty mornings the stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the
farther bank were menacing indeed, bristling with projections, towers,
and chimneys, fl