In town let me die.
For in truth I can’t bear the country, not I.
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
Oh! give me the sweet, shady side of Pall Mall.”
An English greyhound taught me that, one summer when I was in London, with a dearly loved mistress who afterward married a man who hated dogs.
Well, to come back to the Bowery. It was a fine night, and everybody was out but the cripples. Oh, what a forest of little feet and big feet, and pretty feet and ugly feet, and good feet and wicked feet. I trotted among them, moralising just as hard as I could.
Feet have as much character as faces. Show me a pair of shoes with the ankles in them, and I’ll tell you what kind of a headpiece crowns the structure.
For a while, I ran beside a nice little pair of stout, black, walking shoes. They had been patched, but the blacking on them shone over the patch. There were neat, darned stockings in the shoes, above them the trim circle of a serge skirt, then, on account of the crowd, I could see no more. But I knew a tidy young girl walked in those shoes, and her brother must have approved of her, for if a boy goes walking with his sister at night, she must be a pretty nice girl. They were going to a moving picture show, and were debating what they should buy for their sick mother with the ten cents that would be left. Finally they decided on grape fruit.
The boy had stocky feet encased in heavy boots that had not been bought this side of the Atlantic. I listened to the rich brogue of the boots, and found it was Irish. When the great yellow and red mouth of a moving picture palace swallowed up shoes and owners, I sidled up to another pair in the throng.