The following text is adapted from Ann Petry’s 1946 novel The Street. Lutie lives in an apartment in Harlem, New York.

The glow from the sunset was making the street radiant. The street is nice in this light, [Lutie] thought. It was swarming with children who were playing ball and darting back and forth across the sidewalk in complicated games of tag. Girls were skipping double dutch rope, going tirelessly through the exact center of a pair of ropes, jumping first on one foot and then the other.

©1946 by Ann Petry