As the wholesale dry-goods district is left behind and the realm of the jobbers in "notions" is reached, and the handlers of artificial flowers and patent buttons and all sorts of specialties, Grace Church spire becomes nearer and clearer, so that the base of it can be seen. Here, as below, and farther below and above and everywhere along Broadway, are the stoop and sidewalk sellers of candies, dogs, combs, chewing-gum, pipes, looking-glasses, and horrible burning smells. They seem especially to love the neighborhood of what all walkers up-town detest, a new building in the course of erection—with sidewalks blocked, and a set of steep steps to mount—only, your true walker up-town always prefers to go around by way of the street, where he is almost run down by a cab, perhaps, which he forgets entirely a moment later when he suddenly hears a stirring bell, an approaching roar, and a shrieking whistle growing louder:
Across Broadway flashes a fire-engine, with the horses at a gallop, the earth trembling, the hatless driver leaning forward with arms out straight, and a trail of sparks and smoke behind. Another whizz, and the long ladder-wagon shoots across with firemen slinging on their flapping coats, while behind in its wake are borne many small crazed boys, who could no more keep from running than the alarm-bell at the engine-house could keep from ringing when the policeman turned on the circuit. And young boys are not the only ones. No more to be thrilled by this delight—it will mean to be old.
In front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
III
At last Grace Church, with its clean light stone, is reached; and the green grass and shrubbery in front of the interesting-looking Gothic rectory. It is a glad relief. And now—in fact, a little before this point—about where stood that melancholy building bearing the plaintive sign "Old London Street"—which was used now for church services and now prize-fights and had never been much of a success at anything—about here, the up-town walkers notice (unless lured off to the left by the thick tree-tops of Washington Square to look at the goodliest row of houses in all the island) that the character of Broadway has changed even more than the direction of the street changes. A short distance below the bend all the stores were wholesale, now they are becoming solidly retail. Instead of buyers the people along the street are mostly shoppers. Down there were very few women; up here are very few men. This is especially noticeable when Union Square is reached, with cable-cars clanging around Dead Man's Curve in front of Lafayette's statue. Here, down Fourteenth Street, may be seen shops and shoppers of the most virulent type; windows which draw women's heads around whether they want to look or not, causing them to run you down and making them deaf to your apologies for it. Big dry-goods stores and small millinery shops; general stores and department stores, and the places where the sidewalks are crowded with what is known to the trade as "Louis Fourteenth Street furniture." All this accounts for there being more restaurants now and different smells and another feeling in the air.
... Diana on top glistening in the sun.
From the upper corner of Union Square, with its glittering jewellery-shops and music-stores and publishers' buildings, and its somewhat pathetic-looking hotels, once fashionable but now fast becoming out-of-date and landmarky (though they seem good enough to those who sit and wait on park benches all day), the open spaciousness of Madison Square comes into view, the next green oasis for the up-town traveller. This will help him up the intervening blocks if he is not interested in the stretch of stores, though these are a different sort of shop, and they seem to say, with their large, impressive windows, their footmen, their buttons at the door, "We are very superior and fashionable."
