They lived chiefly in windowless, six-by-eight rooms, always a
cheap, dirty calico curtain dividing the three-foot parlor in
front from the five-foot bedroom behind, the former cluttered with
a van-load of useless junk, dirty blankets, decrepit furniture,
glittering gewgaws, a black baby squirming naked in a basket of
rags with an Episcopal prayerbook under its pillow--relic of the
old demon-scaring superstitions of Voodoo worship. Every inch of
the walls was "decorated," after the artistic temperament of the
race, with pages of illustrated magazines or newspapers, half-
tones of all things conceivable with no small amount of text in
sundry languages, many a page purely of advertising matter, the
muscular, imbruted likeness of a certain black champion rarely
missing, frequently with a Bible laid reverently beneath it.
Outside, before each room, a tin fireplace for cooking
precariously bestrided the veranda rail.
Often a tumble-down hovel where three would seem a crowd yielded
up more than a dozen inmates, many of whom, being at work, must be
looked for later--the "back-calls" that is the bete-noire of the
census enumerator. West Indians, however, are for the most part
well acquainted with the affairs of friends and room-mates, and
enrolment of the absent was often possible. Occasionally I ran
into a den of impertinence that must be frowned down, notably a
notorious swarming tenement over a lumber-yard.
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