is the Boston of Virginia; Norfolk its New York. The comparison
does not, of course, hold in all particulars, Richmond being, for
instance, larger than Norfolk, and not a seaport. Yet, on the other
hand, Boston manages, more than any seaport that I know of, to conceal
from the visitor the signs of its maritime life; wherefore Richmond
looks about as much like a port as does the familiar part of Boston.

The houses on the principal residence streets of Richmond are not built
in such close ranks as Boston houses; they have more elbow-room; numbers
of them have yards and gardens; and there is not about Richmond houses
the Bostonian insistence upon red brick; nevertheless many houses of
both cities give off the same suggestion of having long been lived in by
the descendants of their builders. So, too, though the Capitol at
Richmond has little architectural resemblance to Boston's gold-domed
State House--the former having been copied by Thomas Jefferson from the
Maison Carree at Nimes, and being a better building than the
Massachusetts State House, and better placed--the two do, nevertheless,
suggest each other in their gray granite solidity.

It is perhaps in the quality of solidity--architectural, commercial,
social, even spiritual--that Richmond and Boston are most alike.
Substantialness, conservatism, tradition, and prosperity rest like gray
mantles over both.

Broad Street in Richmond is two or three times as wide as Granby Street,
Norfolk's chief shopping street, and for this reason, doubtless, its
traffic seems less, though I believe it is in fact greater. A fine
street to look upon at night, with its long, even rows of clustered
boulevard lights, and its bright windows, Broad Street in the daytime is
a disappointment, because, for all its fine spaciousness, it lacks good
buildings. I must confess, too, that I was disappointed in the
appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as
every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I
looked for young women fitted to inherit the debutante mantles of such
nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles
Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie
Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur B. Kinsolving).

In the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of Richmond
increased 50 per cent. Her population by the last census was about
130,000, of which a third is color