_moules marinieres_ and the
_escargots_ it was no longer imagination, he felt sure of the fact. To
stimulate through the palate such pleasant fancy was the idea of Richard
de Croisac, Marquis de Logerot, who opened the place in 1892. When
Logerot's passed the setting was made to serve a purpose ignominious,
though highly laudable. It became an incubator shop, and tiny coloured
babies squirmed mysteriously where once the _casserole_ steamed.

The neighbourhood is rich in gastronomical memories. At the same corner
for twenty years the chop-house of John Wallace flourished. In the
eighties it was one of the few chop-houses uptown. There was a flavour
of Bohemia about the clientele. Characters who were famous in their day
but whose very names are now forgotten, congregated there for the steaks
and kidneys and the ale drawn from the wood. There, so the story goes,
was sown the seed of the Great Mince Pie Contest. An actor, dropping
into Wallace's late one evening for the after-work rarebit, overheard
fragments of ah argument about the relative merits of the mince pies of
certain of the city's hotels and refectories. He was playing at the time
in the dramatization of Mr. Tarkington's "Monsieur Beaucaire," and the
next evening he brought up the subject for discussion with various
ladies and gentlemen of the company. Had it been a matter of lobsters he
might have had an apathetic response. But the homely mince pie roused to
riotous enthusiasm. Each player protested that he or she knew of a place
from which came a mince pie surpassing all others. So the contest was
arranged and a jury of unimpeachable character selected, and two nights
later the pies were brought proudly in and in turn sampled. Incidentally
the winning pasty came from the old Ashland House at Fourth Avenue and
Twenty-fourth Street, and its sponsor was Mr. A.G. (better known as
"Bogey") Andrews.

There was a family hotel called the Glenham on the Avenue between
Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets, and at the north-east corner of
Twenty-second, where part of the base of the "Flatiron Building" now
is, was the old Cumberland. There was one man, at least, who appreciated
the Cumberland. In fact he liked it so well that, when the structure was
to be demolished to make way for the new skyscraper, he refused to move
out, and having a lease, could not be evicted. So he stayed there to the
last, while the bricks came tumbling down about his ears. Then, just
around t