boots, of which he is grandly conscious.
There are introductions. "Mr. Goldstone, meet Mrs. Silverware." They are
met. There is a flashing of eyes. Three or four silk hats simultaneously
leap into the shining air, are flourished and replaced. The observer is
aware of the prodigious gayety and excitement of life. All climb into
the car and roll away down Broadway. All save the little man in riding
boots. He is left on the sidewalk, gallantly waving his hand. Come, we
think, he is going riding. A satiny charger waits somewhere round the
corner. We will follow and see. He slaps his hunting crop against his
glorious boots, which are the hue of quebracho wood. No; to our chagrin,
he descends into the subway.

We sit on the shoeshining stand on Ninety-sixth Street, looking over the
Sunday papers. Very odd, in the adjoining chairs men are busily engaged
polishing shoes that have nobody in them, not visibly, at any rate.
Perhaps Sir Oliver is right after all. While we are not watching, the
beaming Italian has inserted a new pair of laces for us. Long afterward,
at bedtime, we find that he has threaded them in that unique way known
only to shoe merchants and polishers, by which every time they are tied
and untied one end of the lace gets longer and the other shorter. Life
is full of needless complexities. We descend the hill. Already (it is
9:45 A. M.) men are playing tennis on the courts at the corner of West
End Avenue. A great wagon crammed with scarlet sides of beef comes
stumbling up the hill, drawn, with difficulty, by five horses.

When we get down to the Ninety-Sixth Street pier we see the barque
_Windrush_ lying near by with the airy triangles of her rigging
pencilled against the sky, and look amorously on the gentle curve of her
strakes (if that is what they are). We feel that it would be a fine
thing to be off soundings, greeting the bounding billow, not to say the
bar-room steward; and yet, being a cautious soul of reservations all
compact, we must admit that about the time we got abreast of New Dorp
we would be homesick for our favourite subway station.

The pier, despite its deposit of filth, bales of old shoes, reeking
barrels, scows of rubbish, sodden papers, boxes of broken bottles and a
thick paste of dust and ash-powder everywhere, is a happy lounging
ground for a few idlers on Sunday morning. A large cargo steamer, the
_Eclipse_, lay at the wharf, standing very high out of the water. Three
small boys were