ple of worship, and others quite as vigorously
contending that it took its name from Charlotte Temple, who lived
nearby. Here you find Reynolds's tavern metamorphosed into a modern
place of business, and though the street is still quaint-appearing,
every suggestion of romance has vanished from the tavern. Nevertheless
the curious, who in its days of need regarded it from afar, love to
sit in it, surrounded by modern conveniences, and tell what it was
like "in Drake's time."

Drake prospered, and after a time set up his pharmacy in the busiest
part of town, that later grew to be the core of Newspaper Row. When
Drake lived in Park Row, the second door from Beekman Street, he and
Halleck hit upon the idea of the "Croaker Papers," a series of satires
in verse, printed in the _Evening Post_, in which the poets sailed
into the public characters of the day. This was the house where
Halleck went to read his _Fanny_ to Drake, and made some corrections
at his friend's suggestion before he gave it to the world.

[Illustration: The Shakespeare Tavern]

Around the corner from the Park Row shop, the Shakespeare Tavern was
conducted by Thomas Hawkins Hodgkinson, the actor; a resort for the
actors, the artists, the writers, the talkers of the town; a popular
rendezvous quite in contrast to Reynolds's quiet inn. It stood at the
southwest corner of Fulton and Nassau streets, a double house of
brick, having for its sign a bust of the great poet over the door. In
after years a tablet was set to mark the spot. Halleck tells of a
meeting here with James Lawson, the journalist, who came to write the
_Tales and Sketches of a Cosmopolite_.

On a night when Drake and Paulding and some others gathered for a
friendly evening there arose a discussion, argued for and against by
all the company, as to whether or not the rivers of America were rich
enough in legend and romance to lend themselves to poetic treatment.
And after the talk had lengthened into the morning hours, Drake went
to the room over his Park Row shop to put his view of the subject into
writing. In a few days he read to Halleck the poem on which his fame
chiefly rests, _The Culprit Fay_--a poetic fantasy illumining the
Highlands of the Hudson.

In the year 1820, Halleck sat in the Park Row house by the bedside of
his friend, who was dying of consumption, and here, at the age of
twenty-five, Joseph Rodman Drake passed away. Halleck followed the
coffin to that beautiful spot beyon