mooth, heavy
flagstones which led up from the sidewalk, or on the great steps flanked
by massive balustrades. The four mansions, in their new, lofty, and
apparently tenantless state, looked, like the occasional residences of
people for some purpose of ceremony, rather than the dear homes of the
small, loving, domestic circles that really lived there.

Such was the outer view of the east side of the block, and it is the
only view that the reader of this book will get; for it is the author's
intention profoundly to respect the select seclusion of the occupants.

Now, the west side of the block was in all respects, exactly opposite to
the east side. The houses were built of bricks, dingy with the whirling
dust of twenty years. Two of the three stories swarmed with women and
children, always visible at all seasons; and the lower story was devoted
to some kind of cheap trade. Wholesale business is gregarious in its
ways; but it is the habit of retail business to scatter, so as to
present, in the same neighborhood, no two people in exactly the same
line. Thus it happened that, on the west side of the block, there was
only one drygoods dealer, whose shop front and awning posts were
festooned with calicoes and other fabrics, ticketed with ingeniously
deformed figures, and bearing some attractive adjective, expressing the
owners private and conscientious opinion of their excellence. There was
one boot-maker, who strung up his products in long branches, like
onions; and, although his business was not at all flourishing, solaced
himself with the reflection that he had a monopoly of it on the block.
There was one apothecary, between whose flashing red and yellow lights
and those of his nearest rival there was a desirable distance. A
solitary coffinmaker, a butcher, a baker, a newspaper vender, a barber,
a confectioner, a hardware merchant, a hatter, and a tailor, each
encroaching rather extensively on the sidewalk with the emblems of his
trade, rejoiced in their exemption from a ruinous competition. The only
people on the block whose interests appeared to clash, were the grocers,
who flanked either corner, and made a large and delusive show of boxes,
barrels, and tea chests; and it was strongly suspected that they were
identical in interests, under different names, and maintained a secret
league to catch all the custom of the vicinity.

The south side was a gradation of buildings, from the two-story brick
grocery on the west corn