Now, the west side of the block was in all respects, exactly opposite to
the east side. The houses were built of bricks, dingy with the whirling
dust of twenty years. Two of the three stories swarmed with women and
children, always visible at all seasons; and the lower story was devoted
to some kind of cheap trade. Wholesale business is gregarious in its
ways; but it is the habit of retail business to scatter, so as to
present, in the same neighborhood, no two people in exactly the same
line. Thus it happened that, on the west side of the block, there was
only one drygoods dealer, whose shop front and awning posts were
festooned with calicoes and other fabrics, ticketed with ingeniously
deformed figures, and bearing some attractive adjective, expressing the
owners private and conscientious opinion of their excellence. There was
one boot-maker, who strung up his products in long branches, like
onions; and, although his business was not at all flourishing, solaced
himself with the reflection that he had a monopoly of it on the block.
There was one apothecary, between whose flashing red and yellow lights
and those of his nearest rival there was a desirable distance.
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