his bearing was distinguished, his
face handsome and refined; his manners were courtly, of what is known as
the 'old school'; his tact was great--he had a faculty for saying the
right thing. In his own house his hospitality was enhanced by a graceful
urbanity and a ready wit."

The story of Philip Hone's life is substantially the story of the town
from 1780 till 1851. When he first saw the light in Dutch Street, there
were but twenty thousand persons for the occupying British troopers to
keep in order. When, after his return from Europe in the early '20s he
bought on Broadway in the neighbourhood of City Hall Park, that was the
centre of fashionable residence.

But by 1837 trade was claiming the section, and Hone sold out and built
himself a new home, this time at the corner of Broadway and Great Jones
Street. He saw the residence portion of the city go beyond that point,
saw it grope up Fifth Avenue as far as Twentieth Street. The first entry
in the Diary bears the date of May 18, 1828; the last of April 30, 1851,
just four days before his death. That last entry shows that he felt that
the end was near at hand. "Has the time come?" he asks, and then quotes
seven stanzas from James Montgomery's "What is Prayer?", adding four
stanzas of his own.

Just eleven months to a day before the last entry, under date of May 30,
1850, Hone commented on the swiftly changing aspect of the city. To him
the renovation of Broadway seemed to be an annual occurrence. If the
houses were not pulled down they fell of their own accord. He wrote:
"The large, three-story house, corner of Broadway and Fourth Street,
occupied for several years by Mrs. Seton as a boarding-house, fell today
at two o'clock, with a crash so astounding that the girls, with whom I
was sitting in the library, imagined for a moment that it was caused by
an earthquake. Fortunately the workmen had notice to make their escape.
No lives were lost and no personal injury was sustained.

"The mania for converting Broadway into a street of shops is greater
than ever. There is scarcely a block in the whole extent of this fine
street of which some part is not in a state of transmutation. The City
Hotel has given place to a row of splendid stores.

"Stewart is extending his stores to take in the whole front from
Chambers to Reade Street; this is already the most magnificent dry-goods
establishment in the world. I certainly do not remember anything to
equal it in London or Pari