pal graft contracts.

Once, indeed, municipal documents were august pages. Some of the early
Italian and German are on paper that will last as long as the law. And
in these times the title pages of municipal documents were Piranesiesque:
massive architectural scroll work framing stone tablets, hung with
garlands of fruit and grain, and decorated with carved lions, human
heads, and histrionic masks. And initial letters throughout to
correspond.

Now who but France would bind her municipal documents in heavily tooled,
full levant morocco, with grained silk inside covers?

XVIII

AS TO PEOPLE

It is a very pleasant thing to go about in the world and see all the
people.

Among the finest people in the world to talk with are scrubwomen.
Bartenders, particularly those in very low places, are not without
considerable merit in this respect. Policemen and trolley-car conductors
have great social value. Rustic ferry-men are very attractive
intellectually. But for a feast of reason and a flow of soul I know of
no society at all comparable to that of scrubwomen.

It is possible that you do not cultivate scrubwomen. That is your
misfortune. Let me tell you about my scrubwoman. I know only this one,
I regret to say, but she, I take it, is representative.

Her name--ah, what does it matter, her name? The thing beyond price is
her mind. There is stored, in opulence, all the ready-made language, the
tag-ends of expression, coined by modern man. But she does not use this
rich dross as others do. She touches nothing that she does not adorn.
She turns the familiar into the unexpected, which is precisely what great
writers do. To employ her own expression, she's "a hot sketch, all
right."

She did not like the former occupant of my office. No; she told me that
she "could not bear a hair of his head." It seems that some altercation
occurred between them. And whatever it was she had to say, she declares
that she "told it to him in black and white." This gentleman, it seems,
was "the very Old Boy." Though my scrubwoman admits that she herself is
"a sarcastic piece of goods." By way of emphasis she invariably adds to
her assertions, "Believe _me_!"

Her son--she has a son--has much trouble with his feet. His mother says
that if he has gone to one "shoeopodist" he has gone to a dozen. My
scrubwoman tells me that she is "the only fair one" of her family. Her
people, it appears, "are all olive." My scrubw