Crowded tenements from "summary" of How The Other Half Lives by Jacob August Riis
The tenements are crowded to suffocation. The halls are packed with human beings. The rooms swarm with them. They crowd the stairs, the stoops, the pavements. They overflow into the street, filling the gutters. They are everywhere, in the way of everybody and of everything. They make the sidewalks impassable for the rest of us, who have rights in the streets as well as they. They are a constant hindrance, a never-ending annoyance. The tenements teem with life. They are alive with the stir and bustle of human existence. They are alive with the sound of voices, the patter of little feet, the hum of many voices. They are alive with the laughter of children, the groans of the sick, the sobs of the sorrowful. They are alive with the clatter of dishes, the clang of bells, the rattling of shutters. They are alive with the cries of street vendors, the calls of newsboys, the shouts of the careless and the gay. The tenements are alive with the smell of cooking. They reek with the fumes of boiled cabbage, fried fish, stewed meats. They are heavy with the odors of stale tobacco, cheap perfume, unwashed bodies. They are rank with the stench of filth, decay, and disease. They are tainted with the foul breath of poverty, vice, and crime. They are polluted with the noisome exhalations of the swarming masses. The tenements are alive with the noise of machinery. They clang with the sound of hammers, the buzz of saws, the whirr of wheels. They hum with the roar of engines, the hiss of steam, the clank of chains. They throb with the beat of looms, the thud of presses, the click of type. They are resonant with the clamor of industry, the din of labor, the uproar of toil. They are vibrant with the pulse of work, the rhythm of effort, the symphony of production. The tenements are alive with the silence of despair. They are hushed with the stillness of death, the quiet of exhaustion, the calm of resignation. They are silent with the weight of sorrow, the burden of care, the shadow of fear. They are mute with the emptiness of hope, the void of faith, the absence of love. They are wordless with the anguish of want
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