and a generally spiteful exterior, and you have what was not inaptly
termed by our Milesian handmaid "the scrubbery."

The gentility of our neighbor suffered a blight from the unwholesome
vicinity of McGinnis Court. This court was a kind of cul de sac that,
on being penetrated, discovered a primitive people living in a state of
barbarous freedom, and apparently spending the greater portion of their
lives on their own door-steps. Many of those details of the toilet which
a popular prejudice restricts to the dressing-room in other localities,
were here performed in the open court without fear and without reproach.
Early in the week the court was hid in a choking, soapy mist, which
arose from innumerable washtubs. This was followed in a day or two later
by an extraordinary exhibition of wearing apparel of divers colors,
fluttering on lines like a display of bunting on ship-board, and whose
flapping in the breeze was like irregular discharges of musketry. It was
evident also that the court exercised a demoralizing influence over the
whole neighborhood. A sanguine property-owner once put up a handsome
dwelling on the corner of our street, and lived therein; but although
he appeared frequently on his balcony, clad in a bright crimson
dressing-gown, which made him look like a tropical bird of some rare
and gorgeous species, he failed to woo any kindred dressing-gown to the
vicinity, and only provoked opprobrious epithets from the gamins of the
court. He moved away shortly after, and on going by the house one day,
I noticed a bill of "Rooms to let, with board," posted conspicuously on
the Corinthian columns of the porch. McGinnis Court had triumphed. An
interchange of civilities at once took place between the court and
the servants' area of the palatial mansion, and some of the young men
boarders exchange playful slang with the adolescent members of the
court. From that moment we felt that our claims to gentility were
forever abandoned.