The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1920-12-10
II. IEONORA.

| together WIN Ine races, It's VIII
dows made the Street, being of many
sorts, to each it's own significant illu-
mination: hard plate glass masks of
saloons beaming false fellowship
mean shop fronts of ingratiating
shine, windows of homely golden glow,
others through whose latticed shutters
filtered sinister CLEANS bespeaking
the unspeakabIe, others again that
gave only dull reflections in begrimed
panes of naphtha flames flaring lurid-
| ly above pushcarts arrayed in I'M
| broken lines along the curbs.
Through this welter of light and
shadow, in the sidewalk channels, the
Faces passed and repassed, lurking
darkly in forbidding doorways, seek
ing brazenly the brightest glare. COM
| ing and going without rest, in uncouth
carnival: kind and brutal, cunning
and naive, wicked and innocent,
swarthy, fair, unique. commonplace |;
faces that disguised, faces that al
Iured, faces that meant nothing, that
were mere empty mounting masks;
| faces of oriental cast, yellow and red
| and brown; negro faces in every shade
of quartering. =.
She knew them all: they all knew
her. The sense of strangeness ebbed !;
with every step. with every look
around, with every breath she drew.
she was losing touch with her other
Self which had so singularly renounced
it's authority and faded into impotence
at the Dark Corner, but which still
kept step with her. chung to her more
| closely than her shadow, and like a
wrath of the living. watched, noted
| and compared while taking part in &C
lions wholly foreign to it's nature and
experiencing reactions obscure to it
and unintelligible.
Now the girl moved swiftly, with
ease and boldness, even with hint
of arrogance: giving the Faces look
for look, smile for smile, frown for
frown; laughing impishly up at tall
policeman who knitted black brows
over indulgent buckeyes; flinging racy
men emerging from gin-mill; chill
ing with glance and word the adj
vances of those who should have
known better; chatting hucksters who
bawled in her ears the tawdry virtues
of their wares; pausing now and
again to exchange more kindly per-
sifiage with folk who held title to her
liking: cutting an impudent figure, as
confident and unabashed as a colt
turned loose in home pastures.
Her sharp perceprlons took in every
thing; not one considerable detail es-
capped their remark. And she liked it,
she liked it all, she was curiously per-
meated to her very marrow with de
light in sounds and sights and smells
familiar to her senses since time be.
yond their earliest record.
The Street, never wide, was the mar.
rover for it's double rank of pushcarts
Between these an occasional automo
bile or horse-drawn vehicle went gin
gerly to spare the multitude OF
urchins, half dressed and less thar
: half washed. of every age and almost
: every nationality, that swarmed upor
the asphaltum. Tenement houses
} their fire escapes converted into bal
: comics lavishly draped with candle
bedding and still more candid .womer
drew confidential heads together or
: high. leaving visible only a slender
: ribbon of cobalt sky. In between the
{ air was sluggish, thick with unnat
ural haze. and rank with many odors
E an unholy alliance of garlic, fried fish
: boiled cabbage and stale beer main
t tanning debatable ascendency over tn,
( native aroma of stratum of societ,
r which holds soap less necessity shal
luxury. And the night was tumultuou
8 with screams of children at crud,
e play. bowls of babies wallowing il
b neglect, bawling of street vendors