Judge — June 5, 1897 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

udge A POOR SOUL UPON THE SEA. THE old woman of the mummy face—the one with the shrunken, wasted body and the yellow, wrink- led hands—was borne upon the hu- man sea that swept through Hes- ter street, like a frail bark before the winds. The poor little soul, white with the many frosts, drew the tat- tered red shawl closer and closer about her as she felt the surging of the crowd. The human sea from the ten- ements flowed on through Hester ‘street—roaring and rushing—mad- ly — without guidance from either God or man. The dull gray veil that falls be- fore the black mantle of the night descends fell upon Hester street, and the venders in the little shops lighted their oil lamps, and some of the push-cart men turned their wheels homeward. The surging sea of souls cast the old woman of the mummy face into a little cove of barrels and boxes, high and dry as the wreckage on the reefs. She found it quite convenient then to turn about, to move her arms, to feel, to see, to speak—since she had escaped from the great mob. Not far from her cove of barrels a baker had set his long table of evening bread out upon the pavement for the crowd to purchase as it passed his way. Big, round loaves, like cabbages, mounted in rows and tiers man-high upon the baker's table; and there were half-loaves for the very poor—loaves split in twain with the baker's big knife, to be sold at two pennies for the half; bread for the very poor—and more persons carried away the half-loaves than the whole ones. So the baker went on cutting the loaves in twain, the great mob carrying away the many halves, and there seemed to be a ceaseless dropping of pennies into the baker's tin box on the table. The poor old soul with the mummy face dropped her two pennies in the box with the others, and she lingered with a half- loaf in either hand, debating, pon- dering over the size of them and the weight of them. Very earnest she was too, and very sober-faced, as she placed three half-loaves on the table, one upon the other, and meas- ured them, across and around and through the girth of them, and then she chose the top one after all—it seemed atrifle larger than the others. She tucked it under her arm, hold- ing fast upon it as she would have held a child, and her wrinkled, yel- low hands clasped each other that the half-loaf under the red shawl might not slip away from her. She cast herself into the human sea again, into the flood of Hester by Sarony. FAVORITES. ANNIE RUSSELL IN ‘THE MYSTERIOUS MR, BUGLE." Solomon Bugle was blessed with a wife, ‘As charming as ever you saw in your life She'd lots of admirers among the young fellows, Yet Solomon never was known to be jealous. If once Sol could see you, and know what he'd missed, He'd be awfully sorry he didn’t exist. REACTION. —who forgot — IRONICAL. Jones (as his tire punctures, disgustediy)—"* Darn! it would have been cheaper for me to have stayed up at the road- house and opened a bottle than to have opened one on the road.” street, bound homeward, without a pilot save the street- lamp at the corner, putting her trust in the great mob that surged angrily about her. And the human sea carried her along for a block or more and, strangely enough, it cast her ashore again in a narrow bay —her own little alley- way — and left her there with her half-loaf hugged tightly under the tattered shawl, The poor little soul, white with the many frosts, shivered and shook as she found the dark stairway of the tenement; but she held the half-loaf closer and closer, and then began the long and painful journey of the stairs to the narrow little world above, wherein she lived — this poor old soul with the mummy face and the yellow, wrinkled hands. WILL af, CLESEENS. —to unhitch the chain, comicbooks.com