They offered linen and fine raiment; from foot-gear to hair-oil their
wares ranged. They enlivened their auctioneering with conjuring tricks
and witty stories, selling watches by the aid of legerdemain, and
fancy vests by grace of a seasonable anecdote.
Poles, Russians, Serbs, Roumanians, Jews of Hungary, and Italians of
Whitechapel mingled in the throng. Near East and Far East rubbed
shoulders. Pidgin English contested with Yiddish for the ownership of
some tawdry article offered by an auctioneer whose nationality defied
conjecture, save that always some branch of his ancestry had drawn
nourishment from the soil of Eternal Judaea.
Some wearing men's caps, some with shawls thrown over their oily
locks, and some, more true to primitive instincts, defying,
bare-headed, the unkindly elements, bedraggled women--more often than
not burdened with muffled infants--crowded the pavements and the
roadway, thronged about the stalls like white ants about some choicer
carrion.
And the fine drizzling rain fell upon all alike, pattering upon the
hood of the taxi-cab; trickling down the front windows; glistening
upon the unctuous hair of those in the street who were hatless; dewing
the bare arms of the auctioneers, and dripping, melancholy, from the
tarpaulin coverings of the stalls. Heedless of the rain above and of
the mud beneath, North, South, East and West mingled their cries,
their bids, their blandishments, their raillery, mingled their persons
in that joyless throng.
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