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- 11935
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11876
- text
- Apostles--which, though now converted from its original purpose to one
so widely contrasting, yet still retained its majestical name. The
lawyer or artist tenanting its chambers, whether in the new building or
the old, when asked where he was to be found, invariably replied,--_At
the Apostles'_. But because now, at last, in the course of the
inevitable transplantations of the more notable localities of the
various professions in a thriving and amplifying town, the venerable
spot offered not such inducements as before to the legal gentlemen; and
as the strange nondescript adventurers and artists, and indigent
philosophers of all sorts, crowded in as fast as the others left;
therefore, in reference to the metaphysical strangeness of these curious
inhabitants, and owing in some sort to the circumstance, that several of
them were well-known Teleological Theorists, and Social Reformers, and
political propagandists of all manner of heterodoxical tenets;
therefore, I say, and partly, peradventure, from some slight waggishness
in the public; the immemorial popular name of the ancient church itself
was participatingly transferred to the dwellers therein. So it came to
pass, that in the general fashion of the day, he who had chambers in the
old church was familiarly styled an _Apostle_.
But as every effect is but the cause of another and a subsequent one, so
it now happened that finding themselves thus clannishly, and not
altogether infelicitously entitled, the occupants of the venerable
church began to come together out of their various dens, in more social
communion; attracted toward each other by a title common to all.
By-and-by, from this, they went further; and insensibly, at last became
organized in a peculiar society, which, though exceedingly
inconspicuous, and hardly perceptible in its public demonstrations, was
still secretly suspected to have some mysterious ulterior object,
vaguely connected with the absolute overturning of Church and State, and
the hasty and premature advance of some unknown great political and
religious Millennium. Still, though some zealous conservatives and
devotees of morals, several times left warning at the police-office, to
keep a wary eye on the old church; and though, indeed, sometimes an
officer would look up inquiringly at the suspicious narrow window-slits
in the lofty tower; yet, to say the truth, was the place, to all
appearance, a very quiet and decorous one, and its occupants a company
of harmless people, whose greatest reproach was efflorescent coats and
crack-crowned hats all podding in the sun.
Though in the middle of the day many bales and boxes would be trundled
along the stores in front of the Apostles'; and along its critically
narrow sidewalk, the merchants would now and then hurry to meet their
checks ere the banks should close: yet the street, being mostly devoted
to mere warehousing purposes, and not used as a general thoroughfare, it
was at all times a rather secluded and silent place. But from an hour or
two before sundown to ten or eleven o'clock the next morning, it was
remarkably silent and depopulated, except by the Apostles themselves;
while every Sunday it presented an aspect of surprising and startling
quiescence; showing nothing but one long vista of six or seven stories
of inexorable iron shutters on both sides of the way. It was pretty much
the same with the other street, which, as before said, intersected with
the warehousing lane, not very far from the Apostles'. For though that
street was indeed a different one from the latter, being full of cheap
refectories for clerks, foreign restaurants, and other places of
commercial resort; yet the only hum in it was restricted to business
hours; by night it was deserted of every occupant but the lamp-posts;
and on Sunday, to walk through it, was like walking through an avenue of
sphinxes.
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