Beauty  was  here,  of  course,  and  ease  and  dignity  and  security,
that  most  wonderful  and  elusive  thing  in  life.  I  saw,  I  ad-
mired, and  I  resented,  being  myself  poor  and  seeking.
Fifth  Avenue  then  lacked  a  few  of  the  buildings  which
since  have  added  somewhat  to  its  impressiveness— the  Public
Library,  the  Metropolitan  Museum  fagade  at  Eighty-second
Street,  as  well  as  most  of  the  great  houses  which  now  face
Central  Park  north  of  Fifty-ninth  Street.    But  in  their  place


450  A  BOOK  ABOUT  MYSELF

was  something  that  has  since  been  lost  and  never  will  be  again :
a  line  of  quiet  and  unpretentious  brownstone  residences  which,
crowded  together  on  spaces  of  land  no  wider  than  twenty-five
feet,  still  had  about  them  an  air  of  exclusiveness  which  caused
one  to  hesitate  and  take  note.  Between  Forty-second  and
Fifty-ninth  Street  there  was  scarcely  a  suggestion  of  that
coming  invasion  of  trade  which  subsequently,  in  a  period  of
less  than  twenty  years,  changed  its  character  completely.  In-
stead there  were  clubs,  residences,  huge  quiet  and  graceful
hotels  such  as  the  old  Plaza  and  the  Windsor,  long  since  de-
stroyed, and  the  very  graceful  Cathedral  of  St.  Patrick.  All
the  cross  streets  in  this  area  were  lined  uniformly  with  brown-
stone  or  red  brick  houses  of  the  same  height  and  general  ap-
pearance, a  high  flight  of  steps  leading  to  the  front  door,  a
side  gate  and  door  for  servants  under  the  steps.  Nearly  all
of  these  houses  were  closely  boarded  up  for  the  summer.
There  was  scarcely  a  trace  of  life  anywhere  save  here  or  there
where  a  servant  lounged  idly  at  a  side  gate  or  on  the  fronjt
steps  talking  to  a  policeman  or  a  cabman.
