mind of this. If you were a native of the Sandwich Islands and had
never before been in town and were standing at the South-East corner of
Broadway and Fulton Street at nine o'clock in the morning and were
facing West, you would cry out aghast at this sight: You would see the
quiet, old world grave-yard of St. Paul's Chapel, the funereal stone
urn upon its stone post marking the corner and the leaning headstones
beyond. There is no trumpet sound. But from a mouth at the
grave-yard's side the earth belches forth a host which springs quick
into the new day. It is a remarkable spectacle to contemplate, fraught
with portent and symbol, though the mouth is a subway kiosk, my
Sandwich friend.

Now, there are men who walk about London just as some men collect
books. They are amateurs of London. Year by year they add precious
souvenirs to their rich collections, the find of an old passage way
here, there the view when the light is quite right from one precise
spot, say, on Waterloo Bridge. Sometimes, indeed, they write books
about their hobby, more or less useful to the neophyte: as "A
Wayfarer's London," or "A Wanderer in London," or "Ghosts of
Piccadilly," or some such thing; but more frequently they are of the
highest type of amateur, the connoisseur who will gladly share his joy
in his treasures with a cultivated friend but has nothing of his love
to sell. I doubt whether there are any such amateurs of New York, any
who for thirty years and more have walked our streets as an
intellectual sport with unabated zest. London, of course, has the drop
on us in the matter of richness of material for this sort of collector,
but there is plenty to bag at home. Not far from the corner of
Broadway and Fulton Street, I recollect, is a queer place called
Vandewater Street.