ifices, of an inadequate ground floor into a mezzanine and a shallow
box (a device employed more frankly and usefully with an outer flight of
steps on the East Side), there is nothing mean in the whole street from
the Plaza to Washington Square. A lot of utterly mediocre architecture
there is, of course--the same applies inevitably to every long street in
every capital--but the general effect is homogeneous and fine, and,
above, all, grandly generous. And the alternation of high and low
buildings produces not infrequently the most agreeable architectural
accidents: for example, seen from about Thirtieth Street, the
pale-pillared, squat structure of the Knickerbocker Trust against a
background of the lofty red of the AEolian Building.... And then, that
great white store on the opposite pavement! The single shops, as well as
the general stores and hotels on Fifth Avenue, are impressive in the
lavish spaciousness of their disposition. Neither stores nor shops could
have been conceived, or could be kept, by merchants without genuine
imagination and faith.

And the glory of the thoroughfare inspires even those who only walk up
and down it. It inspires particularly the mounted policeman as he reigns
over a turbulent crossing. It inspires the women, and particularly the
young women, as they pass in front of the windows, owning their contents
in thought. I sat once with an old, white-haired, and serious gentleman,
gazing through glass at Fifth Avenue, and I ventured to say to him,
"There are fine women on Fifth Avenue." "By Jove!" he exclaimed, with
deep conviction, and his eyes suddenly fired, "there are!" On the whole,
I think that, in their carriages or on their feet, they know a little
better how to do justice to a fine thoroughfare than the women of any
other capital in my acquaintance. I have driven rapidly in a fast car,
clinging to my hat and my hair against the New York wind, from one end
of Fifth Avenue to the other, and what with the sunshine, and the flags
wildly waving in the sunshine, and the blue sky and the cornices jutting
into it and the roofs scraping it, and the large whiteness of the
stores, and the invitation of the signs, and the display of the windows,
and the swift sinuousness of the other cars, and the proud opposing
processions of American subjects--what with all this and with the
supreme imperialism of the mounted policeman, I have been positively
intoxicated!

And yet possibly the greatest moment i