One Hundred and Twenty-fifth with anything else whatever? Yes, when the
Parisian confuses the Champs Elysées with the Avenue de l'Opéra! When
the Parisian arrives at this stage--even then Fifth Avenue will not be
confused with Sixth!

One day, in the unusual silence of an election morning, I absolutely
determined to see something of the New York that lies beyond Fifth
Avenue, and I slipped off westward along Thirty-fourth Street, feeling
adventurous. The excursion was indeed an adventure. I came across
Broadway and Sixth Avenue together! Sixth Avenue, with its barbaric
paving, surely could not be under the same administration as Fifth!
Between Sixth and Seventh I met a sinister but genial ruffian, proudly
wearing the insignia of Tammany; and soon I met a lot more of them:
jolly fellows, apparently, yet somehow conveying to me the suspicion
that in a saloon shindy they might prove themselves my superiors. (I was
told in New York, and by the best people in New York, that Tammany was a
blot on the social system of the city. But I would not have it so. I
would call it a part of the social system, just as much a part of the
social system, and just as expressive of the national character, as the
fine schools, the fine hospitals, the superlative business
organizations, or Mr. George M. Cohan's Theater. A civilization is
indivisibly responsible for itself. It may not, on the Day of Judgment,
or any other day, lessen its collective responsibility by baptizing
certain portions of its organism as extraneous "blots" dropped thereon
from without.) To continue--after Seventh Avenue the declension was
frank. In the purlieus of the Five Towns themselves--compared with which
Pittsburg is seemingly Paradise--I have never trod such horrific
sidewalks. I discovered huge freight-trains shunting all over Tenth and
Eleventh Avenues, and frail flying bridges erected from sidewalk to
sidewalk, for the convenience of a brave and hardy populace. I was