The ground that my
morning rambles cover extends from Twenty-third Street to
Washington Park, and laterally from Sixth Avenue to Broadway. The
early rising artisans that I meet here, crossing three avenues,--
the milkmen, the truck-drivers, the workman, even the occasional
tramp,--wherever they may come from or go to, or what their real
habitat may be,--are invariably Americans. I give it as an honest
record, whatever its significance or insignificance may be, that
during the last year, between the hours of six and eight A. M., in
and about the locality I have mentioned, I have met with but two
unmistakable foreigners, an Irishman and a German. Perhaps it may
be necessary to add to this statement that the people I have met at
those early hours I have never seen at any other time in the same
locality.
As to their quality, the artisans were always cleanly dressed,
intelligent, and respectful. I remember, however, one morning,
when the ice storm of the preceding night had made the sidewalks
glistening, smiling and impassable, to have journeyed down the
middle of Twelfth Street with a mechanic so sooty as to absolutely
leave a legible track in the snowy pathway.
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