famous, or infamous? You
noticed the contrasting Celtic and Pelasgic tribes in Boston. What of
them here, with all the tribes of Israel, lost and found, and the
'sledded Polack,' the Czech, the Hun, the German, the Gaul, the Gothic
and Iberian Spaniard, and the swart stranger from our sister continent
to the southward, and the islands of the seven seas, who so sorely
outnumber us?"

Our friend smiled thoughtfully. "Why, that is very curious! Do you know
that in Fifth Avenue the American type seems to have got back its old
supremacy? It is as if no other would so well suit with that sublimity!
I have not heard that race-suicide has been pronounced by the courts
amenable to our wise State law against _felo de se_, but in the modern
Fifth Avenue it is as if our stirp had suddenly reclaimed its old-time
sovereignty. I don't say that there are not other faces, other tongues
than ours to be seen, heard, there; far from it! But I do say it is a
sense of the American face, the American tongue, which prevails. Once
more, after long exile in the streets of our own metropolis, you find
yourself in an American city. Your native features, your native accents,
have returned in such force from abroad, or have thronged here in such
multitude from the prospering Pittsburgs, Cincinnatis, Chicagos, St.
Louises, and San Franciscos of the West, that you feel as much at home
in Fifth Avenue as you would in Piccadilly, or in the Champs Elysees, or
on the Pincian Hill. Yes, it is very curious."

"Perhaps," we suggested, after a moment's reflection, "it isn't true."

X

CHEAPNESS OF THE COSTLIEST CITY ON EARTH

"One of my surprises on Getting Back," the more or less imaginary
interlocutor who had got back from Europe said in his latest visit to
the Easy Chair, "is the cheapness of the means of living in New York."

At this the Easy Chair certainly sat up. "Stay not a moment, Howadji,"
we exclaimed, "in removing our deep-seated prepossession that New York
is the most expensive place on the planet."

But instead of instantly complying our friend fell into a smiling muse,
from which he broke at last to say: "I have long been touched by the
pathos of a fact which I believe is not yet generally known. Do you know
yourself, with the searching knowledge which is called feeling it in
your bones, that a good many Southerners and Southerly Westerners make
this town their summer resort?" We intimated that want of penetrating
statistics wh