three o'clock
The room is not there now , to be sure , but we go to see it all the same , and have our little thrill and buy something near the place to take home to the boys , and we shall continue to come each year unless public improvement causes the thoroughfare itself to be hung up in the sky , which is quite possible . Then Evan went down town , and I returned to lunch with Miss Lavinia , for , if possible , we were to call on Sylvia Latham and ask her to dinner on the morrow , the last day of our stay . Miss Lavinia proposed to invite Sylvia to spend the night also , that we might become acquainted upon a basis less formal than a mere dinner . Shortly after three o'clock we started in a coupé with two stout horses driven by a man above suspicion of having `` taken anything , '' at least at the start . It is a curious fact that eight or ten inches of damp snow can so nearly paralyze the transportation facilities of a city like New York , but such is the case . The elevated rails become slippery , the wheels will not grip , and the entire wheel traffic of the streets betakes itself to the tracks of the surface lines , where trolley , truck , and private carriage all move along solemnly in a strange procession , like a funeral I once saw outside of Paris , where the hearse was followed by two finely draped carriages , then by the business wagon of the deceased , filled with employees , the draperies on this arranged so as not to disturb the sign , -- he kept a pâtisserie , -- while a donkey cart , belonging to the market garden that supplied the deceased with vegetables , brought up the rear . In the middle and lower parts of New York the streets and their life dominate the houses ; on the east side of the park the houses dominate the streets , and the flunkies , whose duty it is either to let you in or preferably to keep you out of these houses , control the entire situation .