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184 DAYS IN THE SUN
of the narrow alley, filling it with a rosy light and
inky shadows, while the balconies cast long streaks of
shade obliquely down the house-fronts.
The ground floors of the houses had no balconies
with their flowers and green lattice work. Here and
there were portals leading into the yard or to the
upper stories, and between these were several doors
which passed directly from the street into the one-
room dwellings that received all their light from the
doorway, or perhaps from a small latticed window
also. These were the dwellings of the poor. With the
first rays of the sun they came crawling out like adders
on the south side of a dike to warm their limbs that
were damp and cold. Furniture was carried out of
the houses; the children hopped forth in fragmentary
shirt-tails almost black with dirt, and dressed them-
selves in the open air. The men hung sideways out of
a chair, rolling a cigarette or allowing themselves a
last remnant of morning slumber. Women swimming
in their own fat, wearing only petticoat and skirt,
combed and searched each other’s hair. As I walked
by, I looked into the houses. The impression was
gloomy; you smelled the stench from oppressively
close bedroom air. In some of the rooms, the beds
were arranged in tiers, one over the other. In others,
there were no beds at all; the people slept on the floors.
In these sections, several families often shared the
same room. It was customary in such cases to sus-
pend a string across the room as a symbol of a parti-
tion.
In the wider streets only the better classes live.
Here none but the servants were stirring early. They
were cleaning up for the day, opening the glass doors,
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