In the short stretch of Fifteenth Street that leads from Irving Place
to Union Square are two points closely associated with the literature
of the city. One is midway the distance, the prosaic office of a
brewer now, but once the home of the Century Club when Bancroft the
historian was its president. The other is nearer to the square, with a
tall iron fence, and a gateway not at all in keeping with the modern
appearance of the street. Behind the tall fence is a bit of
greensward, and beyond that a house quaintly unusual in appearance,
seeming to shrink from sight in the shadows cast about it. This is
where Richard Watson Gilder at one time lived, where Charles De Kay
organized the Authors' Club, and where the Society of American Artists
was formed.

[Illustration: Horace Greeley's Home]

Beyond Union Square there is in Eighteenth Street the house numbered
121 where Brander Matthews lived for fourteen or more years, where he
wrote many of his books, and where was held the first meeting to
organize the American Copyright League. It was Professor Matthews who
gave the dinner at which the unique society known as the Kinsmen came
into being, at the Florence on the same street at number 105,--an
apartment house in which Ellen Glasgow, Elizabeth Bisland, and Edgar
Saltus have made their homes, and in which the widow of Herman
Melville is now living.

In nearby Nineteenth Street is still standing No. 35, a house where
Horace Greeley lived, with William Allen Butler, the author of
_Nothing to Wear_, for a next-door neighbor. Three blocks farther on
is the big office building where Dr. Josiah Strong wrote most of _Our
Country_, and where Hamilton W. Mabie has a study in the editorial
rooms of _The Outlook_. A few steps farther in Twenty-second Street,
at No. 33, Stephen Crane wrote part of _The Red Badge of Courage_ and
worked on the daily newspapers. Close by in Fifth Avenue is the
publishing house where the critic and essayist, William Crary
Brownell, author of _French Traits_, and other works, spends his
business hours. Around the corner in Twenty-third Street, on the top
floor of another publishing house is the den of the energetic author,
editor, and critic, Jeannette L. Gilder. Across Madison Square, at the
Twenty-fifth Street corner, Edgar Saltus had apartments for some time,
and just off Broadway in Twenty-seventh Street, at No. 26, Edgar
Fawcett wrote _A Mild Barbarian_.

On up Madison Avenue past Twenty-eighth Stre