I looked into the faces of the people I met, and it began to strike me that most of them seemed oblivious of the fact that they should, by good rights, be looking downcast and dispirited.

They had cheered their approval the night before when the speakers had told them how miserable they were (even acknowledging that they were slaves), and yet here they were this morning looking positively good-humoured, cheerful, some of them even gay.

I warrant if I had stepped up to one of them that morning and intimated that he was a slave he would have--well, I should have had serious trouble with him! There was a degree of sociability in those back streets, a visiting from window to window, gossipy gatherings in front area-ways, a sort of pavement domesticity, that I had never seen before.

Being a lover myself of such friendly intercourse I could actually feel the hum and warmth of that neighbourhood.
A group of brightly clad girl strikers gathered on a corner were chatting and laughing, and children in plenty ran and shouted at their play in the street.

I saw a group of them dancing merrily around an Italian hand-organ man who was filling the air with jolly music.