ities
outside itself. Living in Brooklyn is something utterly different from
living in New Jersey or the Bronx. New Jersey and the Bronx are so
entirely out of the ordinary that they call for no explanation. Living
there has at least the merit of originality. A great poet might choose
to live in the Bronx. Minor poets have been known to commute across the
Hudson. But Brooklyn cannot be dismissed so easily. She is too big, too
close, and, for all her timidity, too contented. Her people come under
the head of those who ought to know better and do not try. Thus, while
living in New Jersey is a matter of taste, and living in the Bronx is a
matter of necessity, living in Brooklyn is a matter of habit.

And a fine, rich, ripe old habit it is, and a precious thing in a
modern, shouting world that has no habits but only impulses and vices.
Let me confess: I like Brooklyn, and I like to dream of going to live
there some day. And possibly I would go if it were not for the desire of
keeping the project before me as one of the few ideals I have retained
in life. I like Brooklyn's shapeless rotundity as contrasted with our
abominable rectangular distances in Manhattan. I like it because it
sprawls low against the ground instead of clawing up into the sky.
Manhattan is solid with brick and steel from river to river. Brooklyn
ambles on peacefully till it comes to a region of sand lots or a marsh
or a creek, and stops. Half a mile further on it resumes its gentle
dreams of progress and wanders north, or south, or east, as the fancy
seizes it. It runs into blind corners, it debouches upon ravines and
woodland strips, it hears the echoes of ocean on the beaches. It is
leisure; it is peace; it is Brooklyn.

At the same time it is well to remember that Brooklyn is something more
than a geographical fact. Brooklyn describes a scheme of life and a
condition of the mind. The life there is like a page from yesterday.
People who live in Brooklyn organise reading circles. They attend
lectures on the Wagnerian music drama. They have retained progressive
euchre and the strawberry festival as essential ingredients of religion.
They are extremely fond of going on long excursions into the country in
early spring. They make it a habit to walk across the bridge on their
way home in the evening, and they speak with great feeling of the
beautiful effect when New York's high buildings flash into banked masses
of flame in the falling dusk. People who live