The place had been originally built in
rising tiers on the side of the valley, and the principal street had
leading out of it, up the hill, steps rising to balconied houses that
commanded a view of the opposite hill. Almost every house in this
street was in ruins; sometimes the ruins were complete--only an
isolated chimney of broken stone wall remaining, sometimes the shell
was standing, the windows boarded up with wood, sometimes almost the
whole building was there, a gaping space in the roof the only sign of
desolation. And there remained the ironical signs of its earlier
life. Many of the buildings had their titles still upon them. In one
place I saw the blackened and almost illegible plate of a lawyer, in
another a large still fresh-looking advertisement of a dentist, here
there was the large lettering "Tobacconist," there upon a trembling
wall the tattered remains of an announcement of a sale of furniture.
Once, most ironical of all, a gaping and smoke-stained building showed
the half-torn remnant of a cinematograph picture, a fat gentleman in a
bowler hat entering with a lady on either arm a gaily painted
restaurant.
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