Life on Broadway (New York City).

shelter of the trees. In the evenings lovers in pairs take the places of the bonnes, and the club man does not wholly despise the opportunity for meditation afforded by the common benches, which are inclosed by grass and foliage, and near the tranquilizing murmur of the fountain. The lamps hang among the foliage, and the square is bounded by high buildings; the bells of the horse-cars and the rattle of other vehicles are half subdued, and the trees give one a sense of sequestration, although a few strides would bring us back to the street again.

Looking out from Union Square, as this oasis in the desert of buildings is called, we get an idea of how interminable a Broadway crowd is.

About a quarter of a mile farther north Madison Square relieves the confinement of he street with fountains, grass, shrubs, and trees, and between the two such a parade may he seen on fine afternoons, especially Saturdays, as no other city in America, and few other cities in the world, can show. The great retail houses of the Stewarts, the Tiffanys, the Arnolds and Constables, and the Lords and Taylors, are concentrated within these limits or in the immediate neighborhood, and woman in her most elegant attire appears in quest of new additions to her already voluminous apparel.

Woman out of the house is always magnificent, and she is never so elaborate in her toilet as when, with the plea of nakedness on her lips, she sallies out on a shopping expedition. On such occasions she surrounds herself with an atmosphere — or we had better say incense — through which she looms in proportions not altogether her own; a spirit of imperativeness and supremacy invests her, and the men among whom she mingles drop into a sort of nebulous inferiority. A masculine spectator is quite apt to overlook the presence of men; the men are there inevitably, but they wriggle helplessly and insignificantly in the feminine sea of furbelows.

So much in the way of generalization; and now to be more specific. It is the writer's unbiased opinion, well fortified by the comments of others, that more pretty faces and