VALENTINE'S MANUAL

untutored savages, who were a disgrace to the name of
waiters. And how often have I endeavored slily to seduce
my hosts away from the Barmecide gorgeous mess of the
barracks to the sober but satisfying delights of the
Brevoort.

Although on this wet morning I had no more claim
than I usually have to be "classical" and although I don't
fancy that newspaper reporters, as a rule, are given to
patronizing the Brevoort, Mr. Albert Clark, fortified by
the card of introduction I had brought with me from a
friend in Paris, was kind enough to take me in and within
another hour I had bathed, dressed, breakfasted off kip¬
pered salmon, mixed tea and dry toast which would have
done honor to the "Tavistock" in Covent Garden or to the
"Old Ship" at Brighton (most cozy of British hostelries,
I salute ye both!), breakfasted, too, in a coffee room
which for handsome appointments and perfect neatness
might vie with any similar apartment in a Pall Mall C1u1j,
and was ready (the rain having ceased) for a pedestrian
excursion down Broadway.

Early Days of Fifth Avenue.

How did Fifth Avenue get its start? Although it
is a centenarian by the calendar, it is only so nominally,
for from 1824 until over a score of years onward, it
was merely a suburban road. But in that period some¬
thing happened in New York that changed it from the
pleasantest congeries of villages that composed the muni¬
cipality, to the congested metropolis that it is today; and
that something was foreign immigration. In came the
Paddies fleeing from Irish famine, and in came the Fritzies
from  the  turmoil  of   the  petty  German  kingdoms   and

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