You follow her glance to a very simple brick house, upon the corner of an inconsequential side street. Beside it on Fifth avenue is an open lot—of perhaps fifty feet frontage, giving to the avenue but a plain brown wooden fence.
"A corking building lot," you venture, "Why don't they—"
"I expected you to say that," she laughs. "They have wanted to build upon that lot—time and time again. But when they approach the owner he laughs at them and declines to consider any offer. 'My daughter has a little dog,' he says politely, 'It must have a place for exercise.' We New Yorkers are an odd lot," she laughs. "You know that the Goelets kept a cow in the lawn of their big house at Broadway and Nineteenth street until almost twenty years ago—until there was not a square foot of grass outside of a park within five miles. And in New York the man who can do the odd thing successfully is apt to be applauded. You could not imagine such a thing in Boston or Baltimore or Philadelphia, could you?"
You admit that your imagination would fall short of such heights and ask Katherine if you are going up to the far end of the 'bus run—to that great group of buildings—university, cathedral, hospital, divinity school—that have been gathered just beyond the northwestern corner of Central Park.
"No, I think not," she quickly decides, "You know that Columbia is not to New York as Harvard is to Boston. Harvard dominates Boston, Columbia is but a peg in the educational system of New York. The best families here do not bow to its fetich. They are quite as apt to send their boys to Yale or Princeton—even Harvard."
"Then there's the cathedral and the Drive," you venture.
"We have a cathedral right here on Fifth avenue that is finished and, in its way, quite as beautiful. And as for the Drive—it is merely a rim of top-heavy and expensive apartment houses. The West Side is no longer extremely smart. The truth of the matter is that we must pause for afternoon tea."
You ignore that horrifying truth for an instant.
"What has happened to the poor West Side?" you demand.
Katherine all but lowers her voice to a whisper.