F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 82
nonundertaking corporation for the rich harvest. The muck is
everywhere deep enough for hogs and fat aldermen to wallow in, and
would serve well the purposes of a supper-eating corporation, whose
chief business it was to fatten turtles and make Presidents.
"We have got through the muck of the mucky Bowery. Let us turn to
the left as we ascend the hill from Chatham street, and into a
narrow, winding way, called Doyer's street. Dutch Sophy, then, as
now, sits in all the good nature of her short, fat figure, serving
her customers with ices, at three cents. Her cunning black eyes and
cheerful, ruddy face, enhance the air of pertness that has made her
a favorite with her customers. We will pass the little wooden shop,
where Mr. Saunders makes boots of the latest style, and where old
lapstone, with curious framed spectacles tied over his bleared eyes,
has for the last forty years been seen at the window trimming welts,
and mending every one's sole but his own; we will pass the four
story wooden house that the landlord never paints-that has the
little square windows, and the little square door, and the two
little iron hand rails that curl so crabbedly at the ends, and guard
four crabbeder steps that give ingress and egress to its swarm of
poor but honest tenants; we will pass the shop where a short,
stylish sign tells us Mr. Robertson makes bedsteads; and the little,
slanting house a line of yellow letters on a square of black tin
tells us is a select school for young ladies, and the bright, dainty
looking house with the green shutters, where lives Mr. Vredenburg
the carpenter, who, the neighbors say, has got up in the world, and
paints his house to show that he feels above poor folks-and find we
have reached the sooty and gin-reeking grocery of Mr. Korner, who
sells the devil's elixir to the sootier devils that swarm the
cellars of his neighbors. The faded blue letters, on a strip of wood
nailed to the bricks over his door, tell us he is a dealer in
"Imported and other liquors." Next door to Mr. Korner's tipsy