found themselves rich. He gave up
hatting and she abandoned vests. They bought a house on upper Fifth
Avenue and proposed to storm society by giving a large party. The
acquaintances of the humbler days were to be ignored. It was guests from
another world that were wanted. But instead of going to Brown and
slipping him a handsome fee, Mr. and Mrs. Newly-Rich took the Directory,
selected five hundred names, among them some of the most prominent
persons of the city, and sent out invitations. The first caterer of the
town laid the table. Dodsworth was engaged for the music. The result is
easy to guess. The brilliantly lighted house, the silent bell, the
over-dressed mother and daughter sitting hour after hour in lonely,
heartbroken magnificence. But save for its association with the
omnipotent Brown, it is the story, not of the sixties in particular, but
of any decade of social New York.

It may be worth while to follow the critic from up-state in some of his
venturesome explorations of other parts of New York. Those to whom he
was to return, those for whose entertainment and instruction his book
was written, wanted to hear of the shadows as well as the sunshine. It
was the picture of a very sinful metropolis that they demanded, and the
author was bound that he was not going to disappoint them.

[Illustration: MADISON SQUARE. YESTERDAY IT WAS THE HOME OF THE FLORA
MC FLIMSIES OF THE WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER POEM "NOTHING TO WEAR." TO-DAY,
IN THE EYES OF THE MANHATTANITE, IT IS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE.]

The frontispiece of the book shows the Stewart Mansion at the corner
of Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, and by contrast, the Old
Brewery at the Five Points. Before the Mission was opened the Five
Points was a dangerous locality, the resort of burglars, thieves, and
desperadoes, with dark, underground chambers, where murderers often hid,
where policemen seldom went, and never unarmed. A good citizen going
through the neighbourhood after dark was sure to be assaulted, beaten,
and probably robbed. Nightly the air was filled with the sound of
brawling. Wretchedness, drunkenness, and suffering stalked abroad. There
were such rookeries as Cow Bay and Murderer's Alley, the latter of which
continued to exist, though its sinister glory had long since departed,
until fifteen or twenty years ago. The lodging houses of the section
were underground, without ventilation, without windows, overrun with
rats and vermin.

For diver