ashington Bridge over the Harlem, and let him
choose his route by the Ninth-avenue Elevated Railroad with its dizzy
curve at 110th street. And, finally, let not the lover of the
picturesque fail to enjoy the views from the already named Riverside
Drive, the cleverly created beauties of Central Park, and the district
known as Washington Heights.

The Englishman in New York will probably here make his first
acquaintance with the American system of street nomenclature; and if
he at once masters its few simple principles, it will be strange if he
does not find it of great utility and convenience. The objection
usually made to it is that the numbering of streets, instead of
naming them, is painfully arithmetical, bald, and uninteresting; but
if a man stays long enough to be really familiar with the streets, he
will find that the bare numbers soon clothe themselves with
association, and Fifth Avenue will come to have as distinct an
individuality as Broadway, while 23d Street will call up as definite a
picture of shopping activity as Bond Street or Piccadilly. The chief
trouble is the facility of confusing such an address as No. 44 East
45th Street with No. 45 East 44th Street; and so natural is an
inversion of the kind that one is sometimes heedless enough to make it
in writing one's own address.

The transition from New York to Boston in a chapter like this is as
inevitable as the tax-collector, though perhaps less ingenuity is now
spent in the invention of anecdotes typical of the contrasts between
these two cities since Chicago, by the capture of the World's Fair,
drew upon herself the full fire of the satire-shotted guns of New
York's rivalry. It seems to me, however, that in many ways there is
much more similarity between New York and Chicago than between New
York and Boston, and that it is easier to use the latter couple than
the former to point a moral or adorn a tale. In both New York and
Chicago the prevailing note is that of wealth and commerce, the
dominant social impression is one of boundless material luxury, the
atmosphere is thick with the emanations of those who hurry to be rich.
I hasten to add that of course this is largely tempered by other
tendencies and features; it would be especially unpardonable of me to
forget the eminently intellectual, artistic, and refined aspects of
New York life of which I was privileged to enjoy glimpses. In Boston,
however, there is something different. Mere wealth, even in t