fiction

“Jacques Bonhomme’s Vision,” a short story by Dyer D. Lum

Through one of the narrowstreets of old Paris late one evening a man was carefully picking his way. Pavements, sidewalks, gutters, street-lamps were then unknown, save to the fewwho had penetrated into MoslemSpain. Save fromthe dimlight-shadows which occasionally flickered in the darkness before some open wine shop, there was no visible guide for a stranger, which evidently he was not, for he moved swiftly, passing the noisy mirth which came with the sound of clinking glasses, and only pausing to hug the wall when some carriage or cavalcade came rushing past, and then resuming his way in the street as if to avoid open cellarways near the houses.

[…]

Black and Red Feminism

Paule Mink, “Broken Arm” (1895)

Picked up in the street, one morning, between a pile of rubbish and some rubble from demolition, abandoned like a small cat someone wants to be rid of, he was carried to the alms-house, and then placed among some farmers who raised him, giving him bread, in exchange, when he got to be a little bigger, for a labor that was very hard for a child, but who never had for him either affection or caresses.

[…]