Donald Pizer

Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Donald Pizer

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ...the beautiful new gowns and hats, and she saw also the curious dresses of swart Italian girls scavenging with baskets on their arms. Their faces were old and grimy, their voices sounded like the chattered colloquies of the monkeys in the circus. The street seemed a battle-field. There was no hint of repose or home in such a city. People were just staying here like herself, trying to get work, trying to make a living, trying to make a name. They had left their homes as she had, and though she conceived of them as having a foothold, she could not imagine them as having reached security. The home-life of the city had not revealed itself to her. She made her way about the first few blocks below Water Street, looking for Dr. Herrick's address. It was ten o'clock, and the streets were in a frenzy of exchange. The sidewalks were brooks, the streets rivers of life, which curled into doors and swirled around mountainous buildings. She was pathetically helpless in the midst of these alien sounds. It took away from her the calm, almost scornful, self-reliance which characterized her in familiar surroundings. Her senses were as acute as a hare's, and sluiced in upon her a bewildering flood of sights and sounds. She did not appear childish, but she seemed slow and stupid, which of course she was not. She thought and thought till she grew sick with thought. She struggled to digest all that came to her, but it was like trampling sand; she apparently gained nothing by her toil. The streets led away into thunderous tunnels, beyond which some other strange hell of sound and stir imaginatively lay. The brutal voices of drivers of cabs and drays assaulted her. The clang of gongs drew her attention, now here, now there, and her anxiety to understand each sound and to appear cal...