Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/541



AMPS had begun to flicker in the wintry dusk. They gleamed with a flaring and very earthy mimicry of the first earlier stars which already had orbed clean little disks of silver above the city's numberless roofs. It was December, and though as yet slight snow had fallen with the dying year, an icy breath made the quick gusts cut like blades. The broad boulevard of lower Second Avenue gleamed quiet enough, for the hour that brings weary swarms of laboring-folk home from shops and factories across to the big East districts where so many of their dingy dwellings are huddled together, had not yet arrived. But the six-o'clock whistle soon sent its loud shriek, with eerie effect, to pierce the stillness of even this drowsy quarter. And then, in what seemed a strangely brief interval, the shabby throngs began pushing their way from a few of the near side-streets.

Varied indeed were the countless forms and faces for any eye that might care to look on them with more than indifferent heed. But none the less a universal sombreness and rustiness enfolded them in one visible fellowship of toil. Some of the men, women, girls or lads wore merry and smiling visages; others told of worriment and fatigue as plainly by their pallor and spareness as by the halting drag of their gait. The spacious avenue was suddenly alive with their dim swarms. Not a few, perhaps, were going hungry to boards where bread would greet them in no plenty and meat was yet more scarce. Along these same pavements, morning after morning and evening after evening, has passed for years this dreary procession, forever decimated by death yet forever swollen by fresh living recruits. It is a far more piteous parade than if mendicancy and not toil were the meaning of it; for here we {right||offset=4em}}