Vignettes of Manhattan"
pointed out of one of its windows and confessed that, failure in life as
he was, he would die out of sight of the tower of the Madison Square
Garden. A reminiscent sign or two is all that is left of the old Hotel
Brunswick, which, among the hostelries of other days, yielded precedence
only to the Fifth Avenue and the Brevoort as a factor in fiction.

Reverting to Mr. Davis, the Tower was one of the staple subjects of
conversation of his heroes and heroines when they happened to be in the
Congo, or Morocco, or looking longingly from the decks of steamers in
South American waters; and the shadowy personage--very probably Van
Bibber--who took "A Walk up the Avenue" started on his journey from the
Square. Van Bibber! Of course it was Van Bibber. It must have been Van
Bibber. For when he reached Thirty-second Street a half-dozen men nodded
to him in that casual manner in which men nod to a passing club-mate.
The particular club has since moved some thirty blocks uptown, but to
the old building you will find frequent references not only in the Davis
stories, but also in the novels of Robert W. Chambers, who was in the
habit of indicating it as the Patroon.

Beyond Madison Square the novelists of earlier generations seldom went.
It is to the men of today, above all to those who have been specializing
in what may be called the New York "_novel a la mode_" that we must turn
in order to follow farther the trail. Here is the stately street as
portrayed in Mr. Chambers's "The Danger Mark," or "The Firing Line," or
"The Younger Set," or in any one of a dozen swiftly moving serials of
the hour, whether the author be Mr. Rupert Hughes, or Mr. Owen Johnson,
or Mr. Gouverneur Morris, or Mr. Rex Beach. The novel may serve its
light purpose today and tomorrow be forgotten. But the current of human
life up and down the Avenue is ever running more swiftly.

CHAPTER X

_Trails of Bohemia_

Trails of Bohemia--The Avenue and its Tributaries--The "Musketeers of
the Brush"--The Voice of the Ghetto--South Fifth Avenue and the Old
French Quarter--The Garibaldi--"A la Ville de Rouen "--The Restaurant du
Grand Vatel--The New Bohemia--The Lane of the Mad Eccentrics--Sheridan
Square--"The Pirate's Den"--Absolam, a Slave--Gonfarone's--Maria's.

Once upon a time an over-astute critic found grave fault with the title
of a novel by Mr. William Dean Howells. There was to his mind at least
an unfortunate suggestion in