NEW YORK OF TO-DAY

CHAPTEE I

THE CITY ITSELF

Great centres of population possess for many per¬
sons a curious and fascinating interest. Why one
particular hamlet should wax and grow strong while
others remain stationary or retrograde is not always
easily explained. Compared with the capitals of
the Old World, New York is still but an infant in
arms. The directories of London and Paris stretch
back almost five hundred years. The beginning of
Eome, of Athens, of Alexandria, of Vienna are lost
in the shadow lands of antiquity while the city of
New York as we know it to-day dates only from
1784, a trifle more than a hundred years. A growth
so tremendous, so unexampled in the history of
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