r dear,
immense, slattern mother--who feels anything of the character of her
great children? Who remembers in these streets Bryant or Poe or Hallock
or Curtis or Stoddard or Stedman, or the other poets who once dwelt in
them? Who remembers even such great editors as Greeley or James Gordon
Bennett or Godkin or Dana? What malignant magic, what black art, is it
that reduces us all to one level of forgottenness when we are gone, and
even before we are gone? Have those high souls left their inspiration
here, for common men to breathe the breath of finer and nobler life
from? I won't abuse the millionaires who are now our only great figures;
even the millionaires are gone when they go. They die, and they leave no
sign, quite as if they were so many painters and poets. You can recall
some of their names, but not easily. No, if New York has any hold upon
the present from the past, it isn't in the mystical persistence of such
spirits among us."

"Well," we retorted, hardily, "we have no need of them. It is the high
souls of the future which influence us."

Our friend looked at us as if he thought there might be something in
what we said. "Will you explain?" he asked.

"Some other time," we consented.

XIII

THE WHIRL OF LIFE IN OUR FIRST CIRCLES

One of those recurrent selves who frequent the habitat of the Easy
Chair, with every effect of exterior identities, looked in and said,
before he sat down, and much before he was asked to sit down, "Are you
one of those critics of smart or swell society (or whatever it's called
now) who despise it because they can't get into it, or one of those
censors who won't go into it because they despise it?"

"Your question," we replied, "seems to be rather offensive, but we don't
know that it's voluntarily so, and it's certainly interesting. On your
part, will you say what has prompted you, just at the moment, to accost
us with this inquiry?" Before he could answer, we hastened to add:
"By-the-way, what a fine, old-fashioned, gentlemanly word _accost_ is!
People used to accost one another a great deal in polite literature.
'Seeing her embarrassment from his abrupt and vigorous stare, he thus
accosted her.' Or, 'Embarrassed by his fixed and penetrating regard, she
timidly accosted him.' It seems to us that we remember a great many
passages like these. Why has the word gone out? It was admirably fitted
for such junctures, and it was so polished by use that it slipped from
the pen