ly, she found it was coming to seem
so to her.

If a man wishes to interest a woman, he does well to speak to her of
his enthusiasms; and if he desires to alienate her interest, he will do
well to forget them. Smith, who cared deeply for New York, and who was
moving unconsciously along the sunny way that led to Helen Maitland,
found that never two enthusiasms welded so readily as these. Part of
this, no doubt, was due to the city's own influence, but probably the
greater part was due to his own genuine understanding and affection for
the town itself.

And Helen had not been the readiest of converts, for in the first
place, coming as she did from Boston, her sympathies were not with the
larger city. She had found its confusion rather tiresome, its
contrasts perhaps a little crude, its poverty somewhat distressing, and
its wealth a trifle vulgar. With Smith, a new viewpoint was hers, and
her old conceptions, which now seemed hopelessly provincial, melted
like mist before the sun.

Smith knew his city as a maestro knows his instrument, and their
voyages together were like incursions into an enchanted space where
time was not. He seemed to know exactly what had been in every nook
and corner of the town at every period of its career. Once they stood
on Broadway near Columbia University, on whose granite wall was fixed
the plate which told of Washington's muster upon those very heights;
and Smith had built up for her, not as an historian, but as an actor in
the drama, the picture before her eyes. He showed her the old Jumel
Mansion farther up town, and they went back together a century and a
half to all the strange sights those old halls had seen.

Perhaps the softest spot in Smith's sympathies was held by the
Knickerbockers--those sturdy old citizens who seemed all of them
somehow to have taken something of the mold of their redoubtable leader
and the greatest of them all, Peter Stuyvesant. Smith was familiar
with them all, from Peter down. And old Minuit, the Indian, selling
his island for a song, was so much a matter of reality to Smith that
Helen came to believe in him also as a real individual.

"There he is now!" Smith once suddenly remarked, as they turned a
corner and found themselves almost in the arms of an exceptionally
spirited cigar-store figure.

"Who?" Helen had asked in surprise.

"Why, old Peter Minuit himself, in the very act of reaching for the
proceeds," Smith explained. For which piece