Remember it?"
Pendleton arose and opened one of the windows.
"Even the noise and smell of this street of yours are grateful after
what I have been listening to," said he. Then, after a moment spent in
examining the adjacent outdoors, he added in a tone of wonderment. "I
say, Kirk, this is really a hole of a place to live! Why don't you
move?"
The other arose and joined him at the window. Old-fashioned streets
alter wonderfully after the generations of the elect have passed; but
when Eastern Europe takes to dumping its furtive hordes into one, the
change is marked indeed. In this one peddler's wagons replaced the
shining carriages of a former day--wagons drawn by large-jointed
horses and driven by bearded men who cried their wares in strange,
throaty voices.
Everything exhaled a thick, semi-oriental smell. Dully painted
fire-escapes clung hideously to the fronts of the buildings;
stagnant-looking men, wearing their hats, leaned from bedroom windows.
The once decent hallways were smutted with grimy hands; the wide
marble steps were huddled with alien, unclean people.
A splendidly spired church stood almost shoulder to shoulder with the
Ashton-Kirk house. Once it had been a place of dignified Episcopal
worship; but years of neglect had made it unwholesome and cavern-like;
and finally it was given over to a tribe of stolid Lithuanians who
stuck a cheaply gilded Greek cross over the door and thronged the
street with their wedding and christening processions.
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