sot in our ways. We like the spirit of McSorley's, which is decent,
dignified, and refined. No club has an etiquette more properly
self-respecting.

One does not go to McSorley's without a glimpse at that curious old
red pile Bible House. It happened this way: Our friend Endymion was
back from his vacation and we were trying to celebrate it in modest
fashion. We were telling him all the things that had happened since
he went away--that Bob Holliday had had a fortieth birthday, and
Frank Shay had published his bibliography of Walt Whitman, and all
that sort of thing; and in our mutual excitement Endymion whisked
too swiftly round a corner and caught his jacket on a sharp
door-latch and tore it. Inquiring at Astor Place's biggest
department store as to where we could get it mended, they told us to
go to "Mr. Wright the weaver" on the sixth floor of Bible House, and
we did so. On our way back, avoiding the ancient wire rope elevator
(we know only one other lift so delightfully mid-Victorian, viz.,
one in Boston, that takes you upstairs to see Edwin Edgett, the
gentle-hearted literary editor of the Boston _Transcript_), we
walked down the stairs, peeping into doorways in great curiosity.
The whole building breathed a dusky and serene quaintness that
pricks the imagination. It is a bit like the shop in Edinburgh (on
the corner of the Leith Walk and Antigua Street, if we remember)
that R.L.S. described in "A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured"--"it
was dark and smelt of Bibles." We looked in at the entrance to the
offices of the _Christian Herald_. The Bowling Green thought that
what he saw was two young ladies in close and animated converse; but
Endymion insisted that it was one young lady doing her hair in front
of a large mirror. "Quite a pretty little picture," said Endymion.
We argued about this as we went down the stairs. Finally we went