This was so much fouler, with its
dirt and noise, its stands of refuse fruit and vegetables, its dingy
shops and all the miserable traffic that the place engendered, its
rickety doorways blocked with lounging men, its Blowsabellas leaning on
the window-sills, that the Court seemed by contrast a most desirable and
retired place of residence.
But it was a dismal spot, nevertheless, with not even an air of faded
gentility to recommend it. It seemed to have no better days behind it,
nor to hold within itself the possibility of any future improvement. It
was narrow, and extended only the length of a city block, yet it was by
no means wanting in many of those luxuries which mark this era of modern
civilization. There were groceries, with commodious sample-rooms
attached, at each corner, and a small saloon, called "The Dearest Spot"
(which it undoubtedly was in more senses than one), in the basement of a
house at the farther end. It was necessary, however, for the bibulous
native who dwelt in the middle of the block to waste some valuable
minutes in dragging himself to one of these fountains of bliss at either
end; but at the time my story opens a wide-awake philanthropist was
fitting up a neat and attractive little bar-room, called "The Oasis," at
a point equally distant between the other two springs of human joy.
This benefactor of humanity had a vaulting ambition. He desired to slake
the thirst of every man in Christendom; but this being impossible from
the very nature of things, he determined to settle in some arid spot
like Minerva Court, and irrigate it so sweetly and copiously that all
men's noses would blossom as the roses.
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