press
and repair clothing, small grocers and delicatessen venders--these are
the chief commerce of the street. I passed my tailor's shop, which is
next to the corner. He is a Russian Jew who came to this country
before the great war. Every Thursday, when he takes away my off suit,
I ask him about the progress of the Revolution. At first I found him
hopeful, yet in these last few months his opinions are a little
broken. His shop consists of a single room, with a stove to heat his
irons and a rack for clothes. It is so open to the street that once
when it was necessary for me to change trousers he stood between me
and the window with one foot against the door by way of moratorium on
his business. His taste in buttons is loud. Those on my dinner coat
are his choice--great round jewels that glisten in the dark.

Next to my tailor, except for a Chinese laundry with a damp celestial
smell, is a delicatessen shop with a pleasant sound of French across
the counter. Here are sausages, cut across the middle in order that no
one may buy the pig, as it were, in its poke. Potato salad is set out
each afternoon in a great bowl with a wooden spoon sticking from its
top. Then there is a baked bean, all brown upon the crust, which is
housed with its fellows in a cracked baking dish and is not to be
despised. There is also a tray of pastry with whipped cream oozing
agreeably from the joints, and a pickle vat as corrective to these
sweets. But behind the shop is the bakery and I can watch a wholesome
fellow, with his sleeves tucked up, rolling pasties thin on a great
white table, folding in nuts and jellies and cutting them deftly for
the oven.

Across the street there resides a mender of musical instruments. He
keeps dusty company with violins and basses that have come to broken
health. When a trombone slips into disorder, it seeks his sanitarium.
Occasionally, as I pass, I catch the sound of a twanging string, as
if at last a violin were convalescent. Or I hear a reedy nasal upper
note, and I know that an oboe has been mended of its complaint and
that in these dark days of winter it yearns for a woodside stream and
the return of spring. It seems rather a romantic business tinkering
these broken instruments into harmony.

Next door there is a small stationer--a bald-headed sort of business,
as someone has called it. Ruled paper for slavish persons, plain
sheets for bold Bolshevists.

Then comes our grocer. There is no heat in the pl