Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked back death and dishonor.
At neighboring corners were the reefs upon which human health, hope, and happiness lay stranded, broken up and gone to pieces.

Bloated faces glowered through the open doors--their humanity sunk away into mere bestiality.

Human forms--men no longer--lay on benches, hung over chairs, babbled, maundered, shrieked or wept aloud; while women came in and took black bottles from under tattered shawls, and said nothing, but put down a piece of money; and the man behind the counter said nothing, but took the money and filled the bottles, which were hidden under the tattered shawl again, and the speechless phantoms glided out, guarding that little travesty of modesty even in that wild ruin.
In shops beyond, yards of tape, and papers of pins, and boots and shoes and bread, and all the multitudinous things that are bought and sold every minute, were being done up in papers by complaisant, or surly, or conceited, or well-behaved clerks; and in all the large and little houses of the city, in all the spacious and narrow streets, there were women cooking, washing, sweeping, scouring, rubbing, lifting, carrying, sewing, reading, sleeping--tens and twenties and fifties and hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children.

More than two hundred thousand of them were toiling, suffering, struggling, enjoying, dreaming, despairing on a summer day, doing their share of the world's work.

The eye was full of the city's activity; the ear was tired with its noise; the heart was sick with the thought of it; the streets and houses swarmed with people, but the world was out of town.