he newspapers are continually bringing a
gentleman resident on Mars to marvel, with his fresh vision, at the
wonders of this world.

As I say, I never lived on Mars, but, what amounts to the same thing in
this case, perhaps, I did live all of my New York life, up to a short
time ago, below Forty-second Street. I gathered from reading and
conversation that there were districts of the city above this where
people dwelt and went about their daily affairs, just, I supposed, as
fish do at the bottom of the ocean, and beasts in the jungle. But I
knew that I could not breathe at the bottom of the ocean, nor be
comfortable in the jungle.

However, it's this way. The person to whom I am married declared that
she could not live below Forty-second Street; said that that was not
done at all, nobody "lived" below Forty-second Street. So the matter
was settled. I moved "uptown." Of course, by stealth I continue to
visit the neighbourhood of Gramercy Park, as a dog, it is said, will
return to that which is not nice.

The beauties and the advantages of the region in which I now live have
been pointed out to me. It is quite true that everything hereabout is
new and "clean." Here the streets are not infested by "old bums" as
those are in that dirty old downtown. Here one is just between the
beautiful Drive on the one hand and our handsome Central Park on the
other. Here there is fresh air. Here Broadway is a boulevard, and,
further, it winds about in its course like the roads, as they call them
there, in London, and does not have that awful straight look of
everything in that checker-board part of town. Here everybody is well
dressed. And even the grocers' and butchers' shops are quite smart.
All this is indisputable.

But all this is a description of the physical aspects of this part of
town. What I purpose to do is an esoteric thing. Through the outward
aspects of this part of town, its vestments, the features of its
physiognomy, I will show, as through a glass, the beatings of its
heart. I will exhibit the soul of it, interpret its spirit, make plain
for him that runs its inner, hidden meaning.

The part of town that I mean may be said to begin at Seventy-second
Street; it runs along Broadway, and comprises the neighbourhood of
Broadway, to, say, a bit above One Hundred and Tenth Street. Now we
shall see what we shall see.

You remember what a celebrated irascible character said about a
circulating library in