gables and shuttered windows so
mid-Victorian that my literary heart leaped and I dreamed at once of
locating a novel in this fascinating spot. And then we rounded the
corner and saw the little park.

It was a bit of old Chelsea, nothing less. Titania clapped her hands,
and I lit my pipe in gratification. Beside us was a row of little houses
of warm red brick with peaked mansard roofs and cozy bay windows and
polished door knockers. In front of them was the lumpy little park, cut
up into irregular hills, where children were flying kites. And beyond
that, an embankment and the river in a dim wet mist. There was
Blackwell's Island, and a sailing barge slipping by. In the distance we
could see the colossal span of the new Hell Gate bridge. With the
journalist's instinct for superlatives I told Titania it was the largest
single span in the world. I wonder if it is?

As to that I know not. But it was the river that lured us. On the
embankment we found benches and sat down to admire the scene. It was as
picturesque as Battersea in Whistler's mistiest days. A ferryboat,
crossing to Astoria, hooted musically through the haze. Tugs, puffing up
past Blackwell's Island into the Harlem River, replied with mellow
blasts. The pungent tang of the East River tickled our nostrils, and all
my old ambition to be a tugboat captain returned.

And then trouble began. Just as I was planning how we might bilk our
landlord on Long Island and move all our belongings to this delicious
spot, gradually draw our friends around us, and make East End Avenue the
Cheyne Walk of New York--we might even import an English imagist poet to
lend cachet to the coterie--I saw by Titania's face that something was
wrong.

I pressed her for the reason of her frown.

She thought the region was unhealthy.

Now when Titania thinks that a place is unhealthy no further argument is
possible. Just on what data she bases these deductions I have never been
able to learn. I think she can tell by the shape of the houses, or the
lush quality of the foliage, or the fact that the garbage men collect
from the front instead of from the back. But however she arrives at the
conclusion, it is immutable.

Any place that I think is peculiarly amusing, or quaint, or
picturesque, Titania thinks is unhealthy.

Sometimes I can see it coming. We are on our way to Mulberry Bend, or
the Bowery, or Farrish's Chop House. I see her brow begin to pucker. "Do
you feel as though it is go