Chapter IV
In the Days of Thomas Paine

WHEN the eighteenth century
was within two years of its
close, a group of men, perhaps half a
dozen in all, made up the writers of
New York.

The city then lay between the park
(a name that had just been bestowed
upon the Common of old) and the
Battery; with Broadway, the main
thoroughfare of the town, sending
out tendrils of narrow streets to tan¬
gle and turn about themselves in such
persistent fashion that they were
never to be straightened out. Quite
abruptly,where the park began, Broad¬
way dwindled from a street to a lane,
but with a strong branch thorough¬
fare to the east which, with the advent
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