"
A fat man, wearing a green jacket on his back, an old torn and
tattered straw hat on his head, and both hands in his pockets, stood
lazily at the door; before which half a score of dirty children were
playing with marbles, and a short distance from which a couple of
children were fighting, upon whose pugilistic exercises a woman,
with a child in her arms and a pipe in her mouth, was gazing with
intense interest.
The general appearance of the town was far from pleasing. At nearly
every window, hats, or shingles, or bundles of rags, took the place
of glass, and the doors, instead of being hung on hinges, were "set
up," liable to be set down by the first gust of wind.
Near one miserable shantee, poor, very poor apology for a
dwelling-house, one man was endeavoring to get another into the
house; at least, so I thought; but both were so much intoxicated
that I could not tell, for my life, which the latter was. At one
moment, the man with the blue coat with the tails cut off seemed to
be helping the man without a coat; the next moment, I thought the
coatless man was trying to help the other.
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