k off they know nothing of all
this. Above us Daly's is closing and its fashionable audience pouring
out on the pavement. In Twenty-ninth Street, the Cairo, the Alhambra,
the Bohemia, are just as brilliant and fascinating as usual.

I remember, one evening, as I was passing the ladies' entrance to the
Gilsey House, on my way home from the club, out comes a visiting
family party--_monsieur et madame et sa fille_. Monsieur stops,
buttoning up that "good frock coat," the uniform of the American
senator, which has proclaimed Squedunk through every capital in
Europe. He stands, the oracle of the post office, the rich man of the
county, the benignant elder of the Congregational church, gazing
across the way at all the flaring signs toward Sixth Avenue.

"Ah," says he, smiling reminiscently, "the Midway. Let's go and look
at 'em, my dears."

I had a wicked impulse to go, too, and see what happened. But I
repressed it, and took the liberty to inform Mr. Smallville that those
places were not especially recommended for ladies. I think miss was
mortally offended with me for upsetting the program.

Are other people secretly disappointed, too, because they can't get a
peep behind those closed doors? It was Madam Eve, I believe, who first
tasted the apple; it was Pandora who lifted the lid of the box of
troubles; propose a slumming party, and be sure it is the ladies who
will applaud loudest. Well, then--those places, dear Miss Smallville
are--very much like the zenanas the foreign missionaryess told you
about last autumn in the church parlors. Now you know all about it.
Ask your brother Tom if I'm not correct. I wager he can tell you if he
chooses.

It is a curious fact, by the way, that all the places which make
Broadway notorious are in the side streets. Just as it is a curious
misnomer to call the toughest section of it the Tenderloin. Broadway
has no slums. Laboring people, even, never make any distinguishable
element in its populace. This is, of course, owing to its geographical
position. But there is one fact which is immensely to its credit, and
is perhaps due to the Irish who govern it, if they do prefer Fifth
Avenue to parade in. For when Brian Boru--from whom every loyal
Irishman is descended--was king, didn't a beauteous damsel, with a
ring of price, stroll unprotected and in safety over his kingdom?
Beauteous damsels with rings of price certainly stroll unprotected
over Broadway, but this is not the fact I emphasiz