WHO can look at a prison without being glad that he is not in it? At the corner of Lafayette and Franklin streets is the great gray pile that is the Tombs. Its turrets, towers and narrow windows suggest dungeon keeps and feudal castles; its heavy gateways,—medieval strongholds. Its high exterior wall and “Bridge of Sighs” make one remember the lugubrious histories of the Doge’s Palace and of the Tour de Nesle. Those inside bear the double burden of being imprisoned and of knowing that close about them is all the life of the great city: its lights, its restaurants, its countless activities and its friends. Yes, looking at the Tombs, grim as it is, makes one feel strangely fortunate.
IX
LOOKING WEST ALONG PECK SLIP
IF Father Knickerbocker should come over to New York on the Fulton Ferry, as in times gone by he used to do, when he had been visiting his respected neighbors on Brooklyn Heights; and if he should stand on South Street and look up Peck Slip and see it as it is to-day—how he would stare through his horn-rimmed spectacles and how his dear old heart would thump under his brass-buttoned coat! How he would pinch himself and wonder what it all could mean! What was that enormous shaft all white and glowing in the afternoon, rising eight hundred feet or eight thousand to the very sky? What were those towers, spires and turrets, soaring above the clouds, the brilliant sunlight gilding their countless feathers of steam and decking their phantom minarets with myriad candles? What could it mean? Had he landed on Manhattan or was this some island built by fairies or by elves? Nay, this place was far too fair for that, and must be then the work of witchcraft and the devil. Or was it, after all, the same old place that he had known, but grown and glorified beyond belief? And when he finally realized this to be the case, Father Knickerbocker without doubt would be wondrous proud of his great-grandsons and of the New York of to-day.
