that they could breathe the shining air without weariness, agony, and labour—that they could live, breathe, move at all among the huge encrusted taint, the poisonous congestion of their lives.
And yet live, breathe, and move they did with a savage and indubitable violence, an unfathomed energy. Hard-mouthed, hard-eyed, and strident-tongued, with their million hard grey faces, they streamed past upon the streets for ever, like a single animal, with the sinuous and baleful convolutions of an enormous reptile. And the magical and shining air—the strange, subtle and enchanted weather, was above them, and the buried men were strewn through the earth on which they trod, and a bracelet of great tides was flashing round them, and the enfabled rock on which they swarmed swung eastward in the marches of the sun into eternity, and was masted like a ship with its terrific towers, and was flung with a lion’s port between its tides into the very maw of the infinite, all-taking ocean. And exultancy and joy rose with a cry of triumph in his throat, because he found it wonderful.
Their voices seemed to form one general City-Voice, one strident snarl, one twisted mouth of outrage and of slander bared for ever to the imperturbable and immortal skies of time, one jeering tongue and rumour of man’s baseness, fixed on the visage of the earth, and turned incredibly, and with an evil fortitude, toward depthless and indifferent space against the calm and silence of eternity.
Filled with pugnacious recollection that Voice said, “’Dis guy,’I says,’dis friend of yoehs,’” it said, “’dis bastad who owes me fawty bucks—dat yuh introduced me to—when’s he goin’t’giv’it to me?’I says.” And derisive, scornful, knowing, it would snarl: “W’ich guy? W’ich guy do yuh mean? Duh guy dat used to come in Louie’s place?” And bullying and harsh it would reply: “Yuh don’t know? Watcha mean yuh don’t know!”… Defiant, “Who don’t know?… Who says so?… Who told yuh so?” And jeering, “Oh dat guy!… Is dat duh guy yuh mean? An’wat t’hell do I care wat he t’inks, f’r Chris’sake!… To hell wit’him!” it said.
Recounting past triumphs with an epic brag, it said: “’You’re comin’out of dere!’I said.’Wat do you t’ink of dat?’…’Oh, yeah,’he says,’who’s goin’t’make me?’So I says,’You hoid me—yeah!… You’re goin’to take dat little tin crate of yoehs right out of deh! You’ll take yoeh chance right on duh line wit’all duh rest of us!’…’Oh, yeah,’he says….’You hoid me, misteh’—an’he went!” In tones of ladylike refinement, it recounted romance into ravished ears as follows: “’Lissen,’I says,’as far as my boss is consoined it’s bizness only…. An’
