y's life, for it is in the two or three hours after
office work is over that the town is at her best. What a spry and
smiling mood is shown along the pavements, particularly on these clear,
warm evenings when the dropping sun pours a glowing tide of soft rosy
light along the cross-town streets. There is a cool lightness in the
air; restaurants are not yet crowded (it is, let us say, a little after
six) and beside snowy tablecloths the waiters stand indulgently with
folded arms. Everybody seems in a blithe and spirited humour. Work is
over for the day, and now what shall we do for amusement? This is the
very peak of living, it seems to us, as we sally cheerily along the
street. It is like the beginning of an O. Henry story. The streets are
fluttering with beautiful women; light summer frocks are twinkling in
the busy frolic air. Oh, to be turned loose at the corner of Broadway
and Thirty-second Street at 6:15 o'clock of a June evening, with nothing
to do but follow the smile of adventure to the utmost! Thirty-second, we
might add, is our favourite street in New York. It saddens us to think
that the old boarding house on the corner of Madison Avenue is vanished
now and all those quaint and humorous persons dispersed. We can still
remember the creak of the long stairs and the clink of a broken slab in
the tiled flooring of the hall as one walked down to the dining room.

Affection for any particular street largely depends on the associations
it has accumulated in one's mind. For several years most of our
adventures in New York centred round Thirty-second Street; but its
physique has changed so much lately that it has lost some of its appeal.
We remember an old stone-yard that used to stand where the Pennsylvania
Hotel is now, a queer jumbled collection of odd carvings and relics. At
the front door there was a bust of Pan on a tall pedestal, which used to
face us with a queer crooked grin twice a day, morning and evening. We
had a great affection for that effigy, and even wrote a little piece
about him in one of the papers, for which we got about $4 at a time
when it was considerably needed. We used to say to ourself that some day
when we had a home in the country we would buy Pan and set him in a Long
Island garden where he would feel more at home than in the dusty winds
of Thirty-second Street. Time went on and we disappeared from our old
haunts, and when we came back Pan had vanished, too. You may imagine our
pleasure whe