Edith and John: A Story of Pittsburgh

Copyright 1912 by Franklin S. Farquhar
Published May, 1912
Type set by Rush G. Faler & Co., Linotypers
Printed by Commercial Bindery & Printing Co., Tacoma, Wash.
Fog and smoke and grime hung over the city of Pittsburgh: a thickening blanket, soggy in its cumbrous pall. The rain came down like gimlets; the air was savage, miserably embracing; the streets were sodden, muddy, filthy, with dirty streams babbling along the gutters; the lights gleamed ghastly, ghostly, hideously, in radiating through the gloom; water dripped from eave, awning, wire, sign, lamppost—from everything, spattering, trickling, everlastingly dripping, till the whole world seemed to be in an advanced stage of the diabetes. It was a gray, grim, medieval night—a cold, raw, nerve-racking night in November.
The gleaming forges, the ponderous hammers, the monstrous rolls of the mills boomed in the distance, sullenly, ceaselessly, like unto the grumblings of a maddened Tubal Cain irritated beyond endurance. Mill and factory and boat and shop whistles tooted and screeched and howled demoniacally, with little agreement as to rhythm. Trains rumbled, cars rattled, and all manner of conveyances bumped along, over crossings and grades and Y's, through tunnels, under sheds, through yards, beneath buildings, over streets, across bridges; some rapidly, some slowly, some cautiously, some recklessly—all going, coming, hither and yon, with a remorseless energy, and for an inexorable purpose. A medley of bells smote the air with a harshness, a sweetness, a madness, that was startling enough to drive the nervous into a wild panic. The rumble of cart, the thud of horse, the crack of whip, the tread of feet, the sound of voice, was a confused mass of noises added to the greater roaring of the turbulent city of iron and steel.
Tired, wan women, coarsely dressed; proud, haughty women, fashionably attired; strips of boys and girls, shivering and chattering, bedraggled and humped up; horny-handed men, roughly clothed; kid-gloved men, faultlessly groomed: some with bundles, baskets, dinner-buckets, or nothing—all hurrying through the elemental dreariness, bending their way from office, from store, from shop, from mill, from factory to home, to hotel, to palace, to mansion, to hovel, to downy beds, to straw pallets, to bunk, to bench, or doorstep; or to place of nightly service, or to pleasure; to rest and refresh themselves, and await the coming of another day of toil, or leisure.