leading into the hall and the other into a closet. The young men having
concluded their remarks, and feeling some relief at the successful
termination of the ordeal, would tuck their books under their arms, bow
gravely to the class, open the door, and walk briskly into the closet.
Even Miss Green's discipline had its limits, and when the lecturer
turned to find the proper exit he had to face a class of grinning
schoolgirls not much younger than himself, to his endless mortification.
Elihu Root recently met at a dinner a lady who asked him if he
remembered her as a member of his class at Miss Green's school. 'Do I
remember you?' the former secretary of State replied. 'You are one of
the girls who used to laugh at me when I had to walk into the closet.'"

It was in 1835, when the new avenue was in the first flush of its lusty
infancy, that a hotel was opened at the northeast corner of Eighth
Street. They call it the Lafayette today: tomorrow it may have still
another name. But to one with any feeling for old New York it will
always be remembered by its appellation of yesterday, which it drew from
the old proprietors of the land on which it stands, that family that is
descended from Hendrick Brevoort who had served Haarlem as constable and
overseer, and later emigrated to New York, where he was an alderman from
1702 to 1713. The Brevoort farm adjoined the Randall farm and ran
northeasterly to about Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. Among the
descendants of the Dutch burgher was one Henry Brevoort, to whose
obstinacy of disposition is owed a curious inconsistency of the city of
today. His farmhouse was on the west side of Fourth Avenue and on his
land were certain favourite trees. When the Commissioners were
replanning the town in 1807 there was a projected Eleventh Street. But
the trees were in the way of the improvement, so old Brevoort stood in
the doorway, blunderbuss in hand, and defied the invaders to such
purpose that to this day Eleventh Street has never been cut through.