Its multifarious business bursts through the narrow shop doors, and overruns the basements, the sidewalk, the street itself, in pushcarts and open-air stands.

Its multitudinous population bursts through the greasy tenement doors, and floods the corridors, the doorsteps, the gutters, the side streets, pushing in and out among the pushcarts, all day long and half the night besides.
Rarely as Harrison Avenue is caught asleep, even more rarely is it found clean.

Nothing less than a fire or flood would cleanse this street.

Even Passover cannot quite accomplish this feat.

For although the tenements may be scrubbed to their remotest corners, on this one occasion, the cleansing stops at the curbstone.