the tall, somber old hypocrite has a score of wicked
theatrical agencies hidden away in its locked heart, and just _see_!

Straight ahead of you, within ten minutes' brisk walk, are twenty
theaters, sixteen hotels, six expensive restaurants, two huge
department stores, the _Herald_ newspaper palace, with the elevated
road cutting across its face, several tall apartment houses thrusting
up their lighted windows into the night, telegraph offices, bars,
apothecaries, florists, confectioners, tobacconists, jewelry shops
galore, all signed with electricity, and producing that wonderful
glitter and glare that is both so bizarre and so enchanting. A street,
do we call this? It is a scene, most theatrical and gorgeous, and set
for the great human comedy which is even now being displayed upon it.

In this theater you perceive audience and actor alike occupy the
stage, as they used to do in the old London playhouses; and poor
little flower girls are pushing their way through our throng, also
offering the roses that fade so fast after they are plucked. Anything
makes an interest, an excitement; a fire engine tearing across
Thirty-sixth Street, a policeman marching a thief to the precinct
house, an ambulance clanging down Sixth Avenue, a newsboy asleep on
the Dime Savings Bank steps, the bronze hammers striking nine on the
_Herald_ clock, a Corean embassy driving up to Wallack's Theater in
their soft felt hats and gorgeous robes.

Never were a lot of people more easy to be amused, more eager to laugh
or sympathize. A gentleman's hat blows up in the air; hoots of
laughter explode after it. It rolls under an express van; a dozen
citizens spring to its rescue. Nerves are on edge. Stimulants are
exciting keen brains. It is a trifle savage, this crowd. Look! See
them hustle that masher! His hat's smashed already. The poor child he
was persecuting is crying with fright. A woman, not given to such a
pure embrace, has her arm about her; a big "plain-clothes man" is
drying her eyes with his handkerchief; a couple of young stock brokers
are bargaining with cabby on his box to drive her home. Ah, that is a
pretty sight! I think Mr. Addison would have liked to see it, and Dick
Steele, I know, would have slipped a bank note into her hand. Oh,
burst of sunshine in the darkness! Oh, chivalry and kindness beaming
out on fast Broadway! Oh, reckless, hardened sinners loving innocence
and kneeling to it!

But come; this is still Broadway. A bloc