He had to
walk to the ruins, the galleries, the gardens, the churches, if he
wanted anything of them; he could not get a carriage even from a stable.
Between the hotels and the station the omnibus traffic was suspended.
The railroads being national, push-carts manned by the government
employes carried the baggage to and fro, but if one wanted to arrive or
depart one had to do it on foot. Tragical scenes presented themselves in
relation to this fact. In the afternoon, as I walked up the street
toward the great railroad station, I saw coming down the middle of it a
strange procession of ladies and gentlemen of every age, gray-haired
elders and children of tender years, mixed with porters and push-carts,
footing it into the region of the fashionable hotels. They were all
laden according to their strength, and people who had never done a
stroke of work in their lives were actually carrying their own
hand-bags, rugs, and umbrella-cases. It was terrible.
It was terrible for what it was, and terrible for what it suggested, if
ever that poor dull beast of labor took the bit permanently into its
teeth, or, worse yet, hung back in the breeching and inexorably balked.
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