The Strand Magazine, Issue 160, April, 1904 Volume XXVII baixar o livro de graça

Excerpt: ... their boots are good and well-fitting, their hair is bound with bright ribbons, and their frocks are pretty. The first thought of the poorest alien immigrant is for his children, and his pride is to see them well clad and well cared for. The middle-aged women and the old women are true daughters of the East. They wear coloured shawls over their heads. There is a curious monotony in the coiffure of the women of the Ghetto who have passed their first youth. The woman of thirty and the woman of seventy seem equally well supplied with a head of glossy black hair. The stranger wonders, as he looks into an old, wrinkled face, at the abundance of black hair surmounting it. If he asks the Pg 418 reason he will learn that many of the Russian Jewesses cut their own hair off on the day of their marriage and wear a wig for the rest of their lives. To the Oriental the glory of a woman is her hair. The Jewish bride was expected to sacrifice this attraction in order that she should not entice the eyes of men. "A CLOTHES AUCTION IN FULL SWING." It is a custom of long ago and the Russian Jewesses adhere to it. Most of the older women came into the Ghetto straight from the ship that landed them in the Thames, and they rarely go beyond its boundaries. Many of them would not if they had the chance. Here is a clothes auction in full swing. The sombre shop, the front window of which is pushed half-way up, is packed with ready-made suits. The proprietor is selling them to an eager crowd of men, who, when their bid is accepted, take trousers, coats, and waistcoats over their arm and walk away with their purchase. There is a tailor's shop close at hand where twenty cutters and a large number of hands are employed in preparing suits solely for the Sunday sale in this street. Within a stone's throw of this street is a great Sunday gold and diamond market. During the morning and early afternoon you may see a number of men with little wash-leather bags or...