the sidewalks are choked with hawkers and hustlers , pickpockets and petty thieves , solitary men in threadbare coats , lean-cheeked and hard-eyed , not one of whom fails to notice my expensive coat and leather shoes , and gangs of young boys as lean as their elders but not quite as hard-eyed , not yet , and mothers sitting on the stoops with little ones in white bonnets bouncing on their laps , the street clogged with rickety carts attached to overworked , underfed horses , and everywhere the smell of boiled rabbit and fresh flowers and wood smoke and horse shit , and the italian songs floating through open windows and the hysterical , desperate babble of a thousand human souls stuffed into a three-block radius .