s--that even cornice running in a smooth line for several
hundred yards really is quite a sight--and exclaim, "Oh, I wish we had
something like this in New York!" But our gentility is a little
self-conscious, for we live on the very frontier of a region, darker in
complexion, which is far from scrupulous in deportment. Uproarious and
naive are the humours of South Street, lying just behind us. Stanleys
have gone exploring thither and come back with merry tales. South Street
on a bright evening, its myriad barber shops gleaming with lathered
dusky cheeks, wafting the essence of innumerable pomades and lotions,
that were a Travel indeed. On South Street the veins of life run close
to the surface.

We are no less human on our street, but it takes a bit more study to get
at the secret. There is a certain reticence about us. It would take an
earthquake to cause much fraternization along Pine Street. Perhaps it
is because three houses out of every four bear the tablets of doctors.
The average layman fears to stop and speak to his neighbour for fear it
will develop into a professional matter. We board up our front windows
at night with heavy wooden shutters. We have no druggists, only
"apothecaries." These apothecaries are closed on Sundays. They sell
stamps in little isinglass capsules, to be quite sanitary, two twos in a
capsule for five cents. In their shops you can still get soda water with
"plain cream" and shaved ice, such as was customary twenty-five years
ago. When our doctors go away for the summer, someone comes twice a week
from June to October to polish up the little silver name plate. It is
the custom in our neighbourhood (so one observes through drawing room
windows) to have reading lamps with rosy pink shades and at least two
beautiful daughters of debutante age. I hope I am not unjust, but our
street looks to me like the kind of place where people take warm baths,
in a roomy old china tub, on Sunday afternoons. After that, they go
downstairs and play a hymn on the piano, at twilight.

[Illustration]

There are a number of very odd features about our neighbourhood. There
is a large schoolhouse at the next corner, but as far as I can see, it
is not used as a school, not for children, at any rate. Sometimes, about
8 o'clock in the evening, I see the building gloriously illuminated, and
a lonely lady stooped and assiduous at a table. She seems quite
solitary. Perhaps her researches are so poignant that the school