t none but Bostonians can know. They particularly derided the notion
of New York's being loved by any one. It was immense, it was grand in
some ways, parts of it were exceedingly handsome; but it was too vast,
too coarse, too restless. They could imagine its being liked by a
successful young man of business, or by a rich young girl, ignorant of
life and with not too nice a taste in her pleasures; but that it should
be dear to any poet or scholar, or any woman of wisdom and refinement,
that they could not imagine. They could not think of any one's loving
New York as Dante loved Florence, or as Madame de Stael loved Paris, or
as Johnson loved black, homely, home-like London. And as they twittered
their little dispraises, the giant Mother of Commerce was growing
more and more conscious of herself, waking from her night's sleep and
becoming aware of her fleets and trains, and the myriad hands and wheels
that throughout the whole sea and land move for her, and do her will
even while she sleeps. All about the wedding-journeyers swelled the
deep tide of life back from its night-long ebb. Broadway had filled her
length with people; not yet the most characteristic New York crowd, but
the not less interesting multitude of strangers arrived by the early
boats and trams, and that easily distinguishable class of lately
New-Yorkized people from other places, about whom in the metropolis
still hung the provincial traditions of early rising; and over all, from
moment to moment, the eager, audacious, well-dressed, proper life of the
mighty city was beginning to prevail,--though this was not so notable
where Basil and Isabel had paused at a certain window. It was the office
of one of the English steamers, and he was saying, "It was by this line
I sailed, you know,"--and she was interrupting him with, "When who could
have dreamed that you would ever be telling me of it here?" So the old
marvel was wondered over anew, till it filled the world in which there
was room for nothing but the strangeness that they should have loved
each other so long and not made it known, that they should ever have
uttered it, and that, being uttered, it should be so much more and
better than ever could have been dreamed. The broken engagement was a
fable of disaster that only made their present fortune more prosperous.
The city ceased about them, and they walked on up the street, the first
man and first woman in the garden of the new-made earth. As they were
both