The Color of His Soul (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ...rows of doubled-up girls worked listless sewing machines. But the interest for me centered in the thriving enterprise of the cellar doors. In one stood a girl with bushy hair. She was surrounded by small bags of wheat, of meal, of corn, which she sold by cupfuls. I stopped to talk to her. She shook her head and pressed a finger to a silent lip. Mine was an unknown language. Two old women, encompassed about by loaves of bread containing ominous seed of some unknown variety, likewise failed to understand; while near them a group of men gesticulated violently, discussing, I thought, the advisability of a third Presidential term--in a foreign language, the only language known to them. A man stood complacently in a third cellar door. About him were pickles of every size, shape and variety. Small pickles and large pickles and pickles in jars; but mostly pickles in great wooden pails, swimming in vinegar of the palest, pickles which he also dipped out bycupfuls for the pickle-loving crowd. " May I ask what you pay for the precious privilege of this cellar door?" I asked, with winning suaveness. His mouth opened. His jaw dropped. "Huh The ejaculated. I turned away. Evidently the case was hopeless. I might almost as well have been in a foreign country, so few of them understood. The herring man was more loquacious. Added to which he spoke some dozen words in English. He sat hemmed in by herring barrels, unsavory and old. They were ranged some three feet from the bare wall of a house. " I pay ten dollar a month for these place," he told me. It was enough. The place was three feet by seven, not more, an oblong bit of the sidewalk, cut off by the barrels. " And what do you do at night?" I asked. " Just leave them out for people to steal?" No. He put...