ll,
How it befell;
(Since Jenkins has told the story
Over and over and over again,
And covered himself with glory!)
How it befell, one summer's day,
The King of the Cubans passed that way,
King January's his name, they say,
And fell in love with the Princess May,
The reigning belle of Manhattan.
Nor how he began to smirk and sue,
And dress as lovers who come to woo,
Or as Max Maretzek or Jullien do,
When they sit, full bloomed, in the ladies' view,
And flourish the wondrous baton.

* * * * *

"He wasn't one of your Polish nobles,
Whose presence their country somehow troubles,
And so our cities receive them;
Nor one of your make-believe Spanish grandees,
Who ply our daughters with lies and candies,
Until the poor girls believe them.
No, he was no such charlatan,
Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-pan.
Full of Gasconade and bravado,
But a regular, rich Don Rataplan,
Santa Claus de la Muscavado,
Senor Grandissimo Bastinado.
His was the rental of half Havana,
And all Matanzas; and Santa Anna--"

Famous as the wedding had been, the verses became more so. They were
copied into the weekly and tri-weekly issues of the "Tribune," and into
the evening papers. Stedman, in later years, told of being startled by a
huge signboard in front of the then young Brentano's, opposite the New
York Hotel, at the corner of Broadway and Waverly Place, reading: "Read
Stedman's great poem on the Diamond Wedding in this evening's
'Express'!" The father of the bride, infuriated by the unpleasant
publicity, challenged the poet to a duel, which never took place. Years
later Stedman and the woman he had lampooned met and became the best of
friends.

CHAPTER V

_Fourteenth to Madison Square_

Stretches of the Avenue--Fourteenth to Madison Square--From Brevoort to
Spingler--The Story of Sir Peter Warren--The First City Hospital--The
Paternoster Row of New-York--Former Homes and Birthplaces--Lower Fifth
Avenue Residents in the Fifties--Blocks of Departed Glories--The Centre
of the Universe--Madison Square in Colonial Days--Franconi's
Hippodrome--The Opening of the Fifth Avenue Hotel--A Thanksgiving Day of
the Nineties--Monuments of the Square--The Garden, the Presbyterian
Church, and the Metropolitan Tower--The Face of the Clock.

In 1762, a Brevoort--Elias was his Christian name--sold