The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Madeira Place, by Heman White Chaplin

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Title: In Madeira Place
1887

Author: Heman White Chaplin

Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23004]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN MADEIRA PLACE ***

Produced by David Widger

IN MADEIRA PLACE

1887

By Heman White Chaplin

Turning from the street which follows the line of the wharves, into
Madeira Place, you leave at once an open region of docks and spars for
comparative retirement. Wagons seldom enter Madeira Place: it is too
hard to turn them in it; and then the inhabitants, for the most part,
have a convenient way of buying their coal by the basket. How much
trouble it would save, if we would all buy our coal by the basket!

A few doors up the place a passageway makes off to the right, through a
high wooden gate that is usually open; and at the upper corner of this
passage stands a brick house, whose perpetually closed blinds suggest
the owner's absence. But the householders of Madeira Place do not absent
themselves, even in summer; they could hardly get much nearer to the
sea. And if you will take the pains to seat yourself, toward the close
of day, upon an opposite doorstep, between two rows of clamorous little
girls sliding, with screams of painful joy, down the rough hammered
stone, to the improvement of their clothing, you will see that the house
is by-no means untenanted.

Every evening it is much the same thing. First, following close upon the
heels of sunset, comes a grizzly, tall, and slouching man, in the cap
and blouse of a Union soldier, bearing down with his left hand upon
a cane, and dragging his left foot heavily behind him, while with his
right hand he holds by a string a cluster of soaring toy balloons, and
also drags, by its long wooden tongue, a rude child's cart, in which is
a small hand-organ.

Next will come, most likely, a dark, bent, keen-eyed old woman, with her
parchment face shrunk into deep wrinkles. She bears a dangling placard,
stating, in letters of white upon a patent-leather background, what you
might not otherwise suspect,--that she was a soldier under