I spent a week in New York, and boarded very near Madison Square. I was on Twenty-third Street, pretty near to Fifth Avenue, and Broadway streaks across the city right there, so I had a chance to see almost everything; because those who know anything about New York City know that if you see what is on those streets, why, you have seen a good deal. It is Broadway and Fifth Avenue going criss-cross that make Madison Square. There are lots of hotels around there. The park is just magnificent; I like it better than Central Park, because it is right there, you know. There is a splendid fountain in the middle, and a drinking fountain somewhere else, and statues of Seward and Farragut. Seward is sitting down, and looks as though he didn’t care.
If I had room I could tell you lots of things about Madison Square; but since you only let us have a few lines, what will a fellow do? I’m going to the Christian Endeavor meeting in July, and that will give a good chance to study up that part of the city, because the meeting is to be in Madison Square.
David G. Dunlap.
My mother used to be a pupil in Cooper Institute, and when I went to New York a few months ago father took me to see it. It is very large; it cost more than six hundred thousand dollars. Peter Cooper built it about thirty-five years ago; and then he gave three hundred thousand dollars to keep the free library going which belongs to it. They have all sorts of schools in the building. You can learn how to telegraph, and to write on the type-writer, and how to draw and paint. My mother was in the painting school, and she paints beautifully. We went up to the reading-room; it is on the third floor; there are rows and rows and rows of books! It makes me dizzy to think of so many. The books are all covered, so they don’t look very pretty. There are long tables and lots of chairs; you are given a check made of brass, or tin, or something, when you go into the room; then if you want a book or magazine you go to the desk and ask for it, and give that check in return; you cannot get out of the room without that check, so you are apt to carry your book back when you are done with it, and get your check again. After all there are only about twenty thousand books on the shelves. I was disappointed; I thought there were millions.
Emmeline Andrews.
Dick Walters is in our “General Information” class, and when Trinity Church was talked about Dick declared he had been in the old building which was put there in 1697. I knew better, because my great-grandfather told about its being burned in the fire of 1776. But we couldn’t make Dick Walters give up the notion that he was in the very identical church built two hundred years ago. At last Professor Townley explained that it was the old site, but a new church built in 1846. Since we had our fuss about it I have been there myself. It is a splendid building, I think, if it isn’t two hundred years old. The steeple is two hundred and eighty-four feet high, and the chimes are lovely. It is an old brown church, and looks solemn and still; it is right on Broadway, but when you step inside it seems just as still! You can hear the birds chirp on the trees in the churchyard, though there is a terrible roar of noise outside. Alexander Hamilton is buried in Trinity churchyard.
Robert Paxton.