scribed upon the windows as places
dealing in "fancy and table luxuries." I have heard my wife say that
many people "just live out of them." They are certainly handsome
places. Why, you wouldn't think there was any food in them.
Everything is so dressed up that it doesn't look at all as if it were
to eat, it is so attractive.

Restaurants hereabouts are commonly named "La Parisienne," or something
like that, or are called "rotisseries." There are some just ordinary
restaurants, too, and many immaculate, light-lunch rooms. "Afternoon
Tea" is a frequent sign, and one often sees the delicate suggestion in
neat gilt, "Sandwiches." Grocers in this part of town, it would seem,
handle only "select," "fancy," and "choice" groceries, and "hot-house
products." There are a number of fine "markets" in this district, very
fine markets indeed. In the season for game, deer and bears may be
seen strung up in front of them; all their chickens appear to come from
Philadelphia, their ducks are "fresh killed Long Island ducks," and
they make considerable of a feature of "frogs' legs." These markets
are usually called the "Superior Market," or the "Quality Market," or
something like that. Great residential hotels here bear the name of
"halls," as "Brummel Hall" on the one hand and "Euripides Hall" on the
other.

You will by now have begun to perceive the note, the flair, of my part
of town. Its care is for the graces, the things that sweeten life, the
refinements of civilisation, the embellishments of existence. Nothing
more clearly, strikingly, bespeaks this than the proofs of its
extraordinary fondness for art--I have mentioned literature. Painting
and sculpture, music, the drama, and the art of "interior decoration,"
these things of the spirit have their homes without number along this
stretch of Broadway.

"Art" shops and art "galleries" are on every hand. In the windows of
these places you will see: innumerable French mirrors; stacks of empty
picture frames of French eighteenth-century design, at an amazingly
cheap figure each; remarkably inexpensive reproductions in bright
colours of Sir Joshua, Corot, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, some Italian
Madonnas; an assortment of hunting prints, and prints redolent of Old
English sentiment; many wall "texts," or "creeds"; a variety of the
kind of coloured pictures technically called, I believe, "comics";
numerous little plaster casts of anonymous works and busts of standard
au