. And a little
further on, a dash of yellow and white paint on a little sign-board at
the entrance of an alley, guarded on one side by a broken-down shed, and
on the other, by a three-story, narrow, brick building (from the windows
of which trail long water-stains, and from the broken panes a dozen
curious black heads, of as many curious eyed negroes protrude), tells us
somewhat indefinitely, that Mister Mills, white-washer and wall-colorer,
may be found in the neighborhood, which, judging from outward
appearances, stands much in need of this good man's services. Just keep
your eye on the sign of the white-washer and wall-colorer, and passing
up the sickly alley it tells you Mister Mills maybe found in, you will
find yourself (having picked your way over putrid matter, and placed
your perfumed cambric where it will protect your lungs from the
inhalation of pestilential air,) in the cozy area of 'Scorpion Cove.'
Scorpion Cove is bounded at one end by a two-story wooden house, with
two decayed and broken verandas in front, and rickety steps leading here
and there to suspicious looking passages, into which, and out of which a
never-ending platoon of the rising generation crawl and toddle, keep up
a cheap serenade, and like rats, scamper away at the sight of a
stranger; and on the other, by the back of the brick house with the
negro-headed front. At the sides are two broken-down board fences, and
forming a sort of network across the cove, are an innumerable quantity
of unoccupied clothes-lines, which would seem only to serve the
mischievous propensities of young negroes and the rats. There is any
quantity of rubbish in 'Scorpion Cove,' and any amount of
disease-breeding cesspools; but the corporation never heard of 'Scorpion
Cove,' and wouldn't look into it if it had. If you ask me how it came to
be called 'Scorpion Cove,' I will tell you. The brick house at one end
was occupied by negroes; and the progeny of these negroes swarmed over
the cove, and were called scorpions. The old house of the verandas at
the other end, and which had an air of being propped up after a shock of
paralysis, was inhabited by twenty or more families, of the Teutonic
race, whose numerous progeny, called the hedge-hogs, were more than a
match for the scorpions, and with that jealousy of each other which
animates these races did the scorpions and hedge-hogs get at war. In the
morning the scorpions would crawl up through holes in the cellar,
through b