The poetic muse hovered closest about Philip Freneau in the days of stirring scenes and momentous events. The Poet of the Revolution was less active when quieter days came. Still he continued to pass a life of restless energy, and lived far into another century and long after many another writer had arisen to eclipse him in the literary life of New York.
Chapter IV
In the Days of Thomas Paine
WHEN the eighteenth century was within two years of its close, a group of men, perhaps half a dozen in all, made up the writers of New York.
The city then lay between the park (a name that had just been bestowed upon the Common of old) and the Battery; with Broadway, the main thoroughfare of the town, sending out tendrils of narrow streets to tangle and turn about themselves in such persistent fashion that they were never to be straightened out. Quite abruptly, where the park began, Broadway dwindled from a street to a lane, but with a strong branch thoroughfare to the east which, with the advent of years, was to become Park Row. It was not a new thoroughfare by any means, since, as far back as the days of the Dutch Governors, it had been the one road that led up through the forested island.
There faced the road, and so quite of necessity faced the park as well, a square building, its front so taken up with windows and doors as to cause wonder that there should be any pretence whatsoever of a front wall. Not an attractive building, with these many windows always staring, like eyes, across the road into the park, but one to be remembered because, for one reason or another, it could well be called the literary centre of the town. Here it stood, the first Park Theatre, towering above its neighbors, glistening in its newness.
