r buckles and powdered hair, in dress of dark silk velvet. (People in
those days dressed more than we moderns. Think of James Buchanan or General
Grant inaugurated with hair and shoes fixed up like that!)

Go to the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, and remember that was the
scene of Washington's farewell to the officers with whom he had been so
long associated.

Go to Canal street, and remember it was so called because it once was
literally a canal.

The electric telegraph was born in the steeple of the old Dutch Church, now
the New York post-office--that is, Benjamin Franklin made there his first
experiments in electricity. When the other denominations charge the Dutch
Church with being slow, they do not know that the world got its lightning
out of one of its church steeples.

Washington Irving was born in William street, halfway between John and
Fulton. "Knickerbocker" was considered very saucy; but if any man ever had
a right to say mirthful things about New York, it was Washington Irving,
who was born there. At the corner of Varick and Charlton streets was a
house in which Washington, John Adams and Aaron Burr resided.

George Whitefield preached at the corner of Beekman and Nassau streets.

But why particularize, when there is not a block or a house on the great
thoroughfare which has not been the scene of a tragedy, a fortune ruined, a
reputation sacrificed, an agony suffered or a soul lost?

CHAPTER LII.

A DIP IN THE SEA.

Shakespeare has been fiercely mauled by the critics for confusion of
metaphor in speaking of taking up "arms against a sea of troubles." The
smart fellows say, How could a man take "arms against a sea?" In other
words, it is not possible to shoot the Pacific Ocean. But what Shakespeare
suggests is, this jocund morning, being done all around the coast from
Florida to Newfoundland, especial regiments going out from Cape May, Long
Branch, East Hampton, Newport and Nahant; ten thousand bathers, with hands
thrown into the air, "taking up arms against the sea." But the old giant
has only to roll over once on his bed of seaweed, and all this attacking
host are flung prostrate upon the beach.

The sensation of sea-bathing is about the same everywhere. First you have
the work of putting on the appropriate dress, sometimes wet and chill from
the previous bathing. You get into the garments cautiously, touching them
at as few points as possible, your face askew, and with a swift draft