Page:The land of many names (1926).pdf/13

 :

What a cursed hole, this ill-famed city, from which I scrape the scabs with my cursed scraper! Lord help us and the devil allow us to sweep up quickly all the ashes and potsherds and muck and broken tins—deuce take it all—that are standing and lying about here



—with all this filth, and with our scrapers and brooms, and with us and our crooked legs and our regulation caps with the badge of this Babylon on them that stinks so vilely beneath my broom!



I tell you, this city is the most miserable of all cities in the world. Anywhere is better than this.



Ah! you are right; the people and the cities are happier everywhere else. But this city, it is crumbling like a scurf, it oozes dirt like a sore, and fie! it sweats slime and spittle. Here iron, stone and brick crumble with sheer vexation; here all solid matter grows flabby, and every word and every breath is changed to bitter dust and clogs people’s limbs.

[Enter. (singing):



Ah, true enough! Why, even the people themselves scatter dust, and dirt drips from their feet. Would that I did not know what grime is! Would that I was not kept alive by filth! Would that I