well to walk for the same purpose where the shopping throngs are thickest, and even where they are most tawdry and ungenteel. Nor do I find it disagreeable at times to be still more plebeian, and stray far down the Bowery or far up the quieter but just as democratic regions of Third and Eighth avenues. Surely it is worth while to know the city one lives in, and surely it is a very shallow, uninstructive, unhumanizing sort of knowledge which confines itself to the dominions of King Plutus and Dame Fashion.

II.

I SHOULD need a more flexible, versatile pen than I own to explain how the essence and the idiosyncrasies of New York gradually reveal themselves if one studies its humbler and cruder as well as its gayer and more polished sides;

VOL. XLIX.-68.

how unlike one feels it is to any other city, and how interesting even when it is least attractive. Taking it bit by bit, and analyzing it in the faces, clothes, manners, actions, and habitations of its people, by turns one loves and hates, despises and admires, berates and ridicules it. It seldom pleases the eye for more than a few moments together. Often it grievously offends the senses which take account of slovenliness and dirt. And always it seems a reckless, immature, inconsequent, unreasonable creature. But it is so big and active, so variable and spontaneous, so well pleased with itself, and so willing that you should take your pleasure as you choose, that you get to feel toward it as toward an overgrown baby whose foolishness, awkwardness, and ugliness are largely excused by its promise of better looks and better behavior, and are offset by its

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spasms of cleverness, its comicality, and good humor.

If we look at the worst aspects of New York in a serious spirit, it certainly does not exemplify the gospel of kindliness, as, after a little, I shall try to explain. But looking at it superficially, or studying its population, not in the abstract aggregate, but in the myriad individuals one meets, up town and down town, in aristocratic or in extremely sordid precincts, good nature seems the "note" of the New Yorker, provided, of course, that you are good-natured yourself. What patience he has with municipal tyrannies and corporate inhumanities, and enlivened by what a salty touch of humor! One would not cite an elevated-railroad car or a ferry-slip, jammed full of tired and hungry New Yorkers, as a school of courtesy. Yet I think such a throng might easily be less courteous anywhere else—at least anywhere in northern Europe, if we can conceive of its existing there. And no woman with pleasant words on her own lips need shrink from asking help or guidance in the streets of New York: usually it will be given with a good many kindly trimmings, whether it be asked from the "dude" or the hurried business-man, the lawless streetboy or the Italian sweeper, or even the traditionally abused car-conductor. On the whole, a woman is more likely to meet with incivility from her own sex than from men of any class; and if, like too many New York women, she expects courtesy in return for brusqueness, of course she will be disappointed.

I have a friend who was born and who lives on an island in a far-off Southern sea, but who has had much European experience and is a keen observer. He chanced to be in New York during our last presidential election, and was shown its workings through many diligent hours. What impressed him most was, not the way in which order was kept, but the small necessity for keeping order-the extreme good temper of the people. At a big club-house where the losing side had been supported, the members, he said, as the returns came in, buttoned their coats like stoical Arabs, and silently, almost smilingly, stole away. And in the City Hall Park, in front of the big newspaper building where, as State after State reported its vote, effigies of the rival candidates correspondingly climbed up the tall façade on the numbered rungs of symbolical ladders, one might have thought, he declared, that every man in the enormous crowd had voted for the winning climber, and felt a kindly compassion for the climber who lagged behind. Yet we knew, and he could see, that a pretty strong-nay, a very passionate-interest was felt in that particular

election.

Facts such as these tempt us to fancy what

a nice place New York may be to live in when oppression, extortion, and stupidity succeed in provoking us into collective bad temper for a long enough time to bring about conditions which will permit individual amiabilities to display themselves unhampered, unexasperated, unabused. Perhaps it may then seem almost as pleasant-tempered, polite, and kindly as did, one summer, the populous fair-grounds at Chicago.

III.

A FOREIGNER must be struck by the lack of certain types, social rather than physical, among the crowds of New York. One great peculiarity of our whole land reveals itself in the absence of soldiers from our streets and drawing-rooms; and the cosmopolitanism of our particular town shows just as clearly to an observant eye. We have plenty of cabmen, for instance, but no typical cabman, while Patis has one such type and London has two-one for her hansoms and one for her dismal "fourwheelers." The New York butler, the New York nursery-maid, cannot be put into caricature with the broad fidelity possible in England, nor can the New York policeman, despite his monotonous grandeur of size. In fact, all our servants, private and public, are drawn from many nationalities, and we have not yet smoothed or coerced them into a general correspondence with our own corporate manners and ideals.

Dudes we have, but not in such amusing numbers as London, nor nearly so large a proportion of those elder lilies-of-the-pavement whose scientific name is "men-about-town," all blooming precisely alike from the curve of their boot-tips to the minutest shaping of their collars and the tenor of their speech; and the beautifully attired, beautifully self-satisfied, beautifully vacuous-looking old gentlemen who decorate the club-windows and the parkways of London are present with us only in rare examples. Again, clerical types make default almost as wholly as do military types; and with all our variety in feminine types, the dowager hardly lives among us. To be a true dowager, not only age and social experience are needed, but social devoutness and an ingrained fine assumption of great social power: so for this type we shall have to wait until the generation now entering middle life sees its grandchildren growing into manhood.

Probably we shall get it then, for this generation now plays a much more important role than was formerly attempted by people of similar age. One can feel sure that nothing will ever quite break the scepter of the American girl. But, in New York at least, a rival scepter has recently been erected, held by her married

there is one circle, one "set," more prominent, more self-exalting, more "highly fashionable," than any other, and it is often described as containing only a few hundred people. But these are merely such members of the best society in New York as tread the social mill with peculiar diligence and, apparently, with peculiar zest. Closely connected with them are a great many others who make less of a career of their pleasuring, but, an they would, might be as highly fashionable as any one else. It is largely from among this latter class that are recruited certain circles which touch edges with the most conspicuous. They are formed in part of New Yorkers as well born and bred as the best, and in part of people,

once strange to New York, who have made themselves important within her gates. In these circles the brains and the humor and the wit, the progressive energy, and the higher cultivation, of New York are chiefly to be found; and it is to them that come accredited almost all the famous (which does not mean titled) foreigners who pass by Sandy Hook. Here there is excellent conversation as well as lively talk-excellent nutriment for mind and soul, although less sumptuous feasting for the mouth and eye than in the "smartest" circles. Here one learns about what is being thought and done in our town and in other parts of the world, and not merely about what is "going on." Here genuine reputations are made, the true