Through Union Square.
Now, off to the right oblique from St. Paul's, marches Park Row with its very mixed crowd, which overflows the sidewalks, not only now at going-home time, but at all hours of the day and most of the night; and on up, under the bridge conduit, black just now with home-hurrying Brooklynites and Long Islanders, we know we could soon come to the Bowery and all that the Bowery means, and that, of course, is a walk worth taking. But The Walk Up-town, as such, lies straight up Broadway, between the substantial old Astor House, the last large hotel remaining down-town, and the huge, obtrusive post-office building, as hideous as a badly tied bundle, but which leads us on because we know—or, if strangers, because we do not know—that when once we get beyond it we shall see the calm, unstrenuous beauty of the City Hall with its grateful lack of height, in its restful bit of park. Here, under the first trees, is the unconventional statue of Nathan Hale, and there, under those other trees—up near the court-house, I suppose—is where certain memorable boy stories used to begin, with a poor, pathetic newsboy who did noble deeds and in the last chapter always married the daughter of his former employer, now his partner.
By this time some of the regular walkers up-town have settled down to a steady pace; others are just falling in at this point—just falling in here where once (not so very many years ago) the city fathers thought that few would pass but farmers on the way to market, and so put cheap red sandstone in the back of the City Hall.
... windows which draw women's heads around.
Over there, on the west side of the street, still stands a complete row of early buildings—one of the very few remaining along Broadway—with gable windows and wide chimneys. Lawyers' offices and insurance signs are very prominent for a time. Then comes a block or two chiefly of sporting-goods stores with windows crowded full of hammerless guns, smokeless cartridges, portable canoes, and other delights which from morning to night draw sighs out of little boys who press their faces against the glass awhile and then run on. Next is a thin stratum composed chiefly of ticket-scalpers, then suddenly you find yourself in the heart of the wholesale district, with millions of brazen signs, one over another, with names "like a list of Rhine wines;" block after block of it, a long, unbroken stretch.
Instead of buyers ... mostly shoppers.