the most fascinating personal documents ever penned.

There is a little thoroughfare far downtown called Dutch Street. It runs
from Fulton to John Street. There Philip Hone was born on the 25th of
October, 1780, and there he passed his boyhood in a wooden house at the
corner of John and Dutch Streets which his father bought in 1784. After
a common school education, he became, at seventeen years of age, a clerk
for an older brother whose business as an auctioneer consisted mainly in
selling the cargoes brought to New York by American merchantmen. Two
years as a clerk, and then Philip was made a partner. The firm
prospered, and by 1820, the future diarist, though only forty years old,
had become a rich man. With the best years of his mature life before
him, with a wish to see the world and a desire for self-improvement, he
retired from business, and in 1821, made his first journey to Europe,
sailing from New York on the "James Monroe." When he returned, he bought
a house on Broadway, near Park Place, on the exact spot now occupied by
the Woolworth Building, for which he paid twenty-five thousand dollars.
There is extant an old print of the house, showing also the American
Hotel on the corner, and another residence, the ground floor of which
was occupied by Peabody's Book Shop. On the block below, where the Astor
House was built later, were the homes of John G. Coster, David Lydig,
and J.J. Astor. It was one of the most magnificent dwellings of the
town, and there Hone entertained not only the distinguished men of New
York, but also such Americans of country-wide fame as Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and Harrison Gray Otis; and such old-world visitors as
Charles Dickens, Lord Morpeth, Captain Marryat, John Galt, and Fanny
Kemble. He had children growing up--his marriage to Catherine Dunscomb
had taken place in 1801, when he was in his twenty-second year--and for
the benefit of the young people his was practically open house. Public
and private honours were thrust upon him. An assistant alderman from