ok, efficiency encyclopaedias
and those odd and highly coloured small brochures of smoking-car tales
of the Slow Train Through Arkansaw type. But once you penetrate, you may
find quarry of a more stimulating kind. For fifteen cents we eloped with
a first edition of Bunner's "Love in Old Cloathes," which we were glad
to have in memory of the "old red box on Vesey Street" which Banner
immortalized in rhyme, and which still stands (is it the same box?) by
the railing of St. Paul's. Also, even nobler treasure to our way of
thinking, did we not just now find (for fifteen cents) Hilaire Belloc's
"Hills and the Sea," that enchanting little volume of essays, which we
are almost afraid to read again. Belloc, the rogue--the devil is in him.
Such a lusty beguilery moves in his nimble prose that after reading him
it is hard not to fall into a clumsy imitation of his lively and frolic
manner. There is at least one essayist in this city who fell subject to
the hilarious Hilaire years ago. It is an old jape but not such a bad
one: our friend Murray Hill will never return to the status quo ante
Belloc.

But we were speaking of Vesey Street. It looks down to the water, and
the soft music of steamship whistles comes tuning on a cold, gusty air.
Thoroughly mundane little street, yet not unmindful of matters
spiritual, bounded as it is by divine Providence at one end (St. Paul's)
and by Providence, R. I. (the Providence Line pier) at the other.
Perhaps it is the presence of the graveyard that has startled Vesey
Street into a curious reversal of custom. On most other streets, we
think, the numbers of the houses run even on the south side, odd on the
north. But just the opposite on Vesey. You will find all even numbers on
the north, odd on the south. Still, Wall Street errs in the same way.

If marooned or quarantined on Vesey Street a man might lead a life of
gayety and sound nourishment for a considerable while, without having
recourse to more exalted thoroughfares. There are lodging houses in that
row of old buildings down toward the docks; from the garret windows he
could see masts moving on the river. For food he would live high indeed.
Where will one see such huge glossy blue-black grapes; such enormous
Indian River grapefruit; such noble display of fish--scallops,
herrings, smelts, and the larger kind with their dead and desolate eyes?
There are pathetic rows of rabbits, frozen stiff in the bitter cold
wind; huge white hares hanging