[Gutenberg 23002] • Saint Patrick / 1887

One of the places which they point out on Ship Street is the Italian fruit-shop on the corner of Perry Court, before the door of which, six years ago, Guiseppe Cavagnaro, bursting suddenly forth in pursuit of Martin Lavezzo, stabbed him in the back, upon the sidewalk. "All two" of them were to blame, so the witnesses said; but Cavagnaro went to prison for fifteen years. That was the same length of time, as it happened, that the feud had lasted.

Nearly opposite is Sarah Ward's New Albion dance-hall. It opens directly from the street There is an orchestra of three pieces, one of which plays in tune. That calm and collected woman whom you may see rocking in the window, or sitting behind the bar, sewing or knitting, is not a city missionary, come to instruct the women about her; it is Sarah Ward, the proprietress. She knows the Bible from end to end. She was a Sunday-school teacher once; she had a class of girls; she spoke in prayer-meetings; she had a framed Scripture motto in her chamber, and she took the Teachers' Lesson Quarterly; she visited the sick; she prayed in secret for her scholars' conversion. How she came to change her views of life nobody knows,—that is to say, not everybody knows. And still she is honest. It is her pride that sailors are not drugged and robbed in the New Albion.

A few doors below, and on the same side of the street, is the dance-hall that was Bose King's-. It is here that pleasure takes on its most sordid aspect. If you wish to see how low a white woman can fall, how coarse and offensive a negro man can be, you will come here. There is an inscription on the bar, in conspicuous letters,—"Welcome Home."

(...)