nto nothing. They are lost in the gloom of
coming night. But still they must go on, for far aloft you see the
lantern glowing like a star, hung between earth and heaven. In this
twilight hour of blue and gold the tower is the mighty guardian spirit
of the scene, sending down sonorous word of the hours as they pass,
and lifting our eyes, like its steady lantern, toward the watch-towers
of Eternity. Must we be forever reminded that those glowing window
squares up its flanks denote lawyers toiling late at their briefs, or
mining stock promoters planning a new cast of the net? Must we be
forever told that this is not a spire in praise of God but a monument
in praise of Mammon? Aspiration is in its lines, beauty in its
sky-borne shaft of blue and gold, wonder in its shrouded summit.

"They builded better than they knew--
The conscious stone to beauty grew."

It is enough. Let us wonder and be glad.

There are many odd views of the tower to be had for a little
searching, spots where its peak appears in unexpected places, or with
unusual suggestion. There is just one point in Union Square, for
example, about halfway round "dead man's curve," where you see the
tapering pyramid and the golden lantern overtopping the high buildings
between. You do not see it again, if you are walking up Broadway, till
you are close to Madison Square. Then, if you lift your eyes, you are
suddenly aware of it looming far aloft over the cornice-line to your
right, shredding the mists on a stormy day, or by night lifting its
lantern up with the stars. There is always an added impressiveness
about a tower when we cannot see the base. The sheer drop of its sides
is left to our imagination, and the human imagination may generally be
trusted to embroider fact. For that reason alone, the view of the
tower from a certain point on East Thirty-first Street, between
Madison and Fourth Avenues, would be worth the searching out. But it
has another and unique charm. If you will walk along Thirtieth Street
toward Fourth Avenue you will see, tucked in between larger and more
modern buildings on the south side, a little two-story-and-a-half
wooden cottage, set back a few feet behind an iron fence. It must have
stood there many years, for the wooden age in New York was long, long
ago. It is a quaint little dwelling, with quaint pseudo-Gothic
ornamentations, and until recently was used as an antique shop. A
large weather-stained Venus stood upon the front