No lives were lost and no personal injury was sustained.

"The mania for converting Broadway into a street of shops is greater
than ever. There is scarcely a block in the whole extent of this fine
street of which some part is not in a state of transmutation. The City
Hotel has given place to a row of splendid stores.

"Stewart is extending his stores to take in the whole front from
Chambers to Reade Street; this is already the most magnificent dry-goods
establishment in the world. I certainly do not remember anything to
equal it in London or Paris; with the addition now in progress this
edifice will be one of the 'wonders' of the Western world. Three or four
good brick houses on the corner of Broadway and Spring Street have been
levelled, I know not for what purpose--shops, no doubt. The
houses--fine, costly edifices, opposite to me extending from Driggs's
corner down to a point opposite to Bond Street--are to make way for a
grand concert and exhibition establishment."

It is far from being all mellowness and amiability, that Diary. Hone had
his prejudices and dislikes and strong political opinions. In the
portraits that have been preserved there is the suggestion of
intolerance and smug self-satisfaction. Also life did not turn out quite
so rosy as it promised in 1828, when he retired from business with a
handsome competence. In 1836, during the commercial depression, he met
with financial reverses which forced him to return to the game of
money-getting. He became president of the American Mutual Insurance
Company, which was ruined by the great fire of July 19, 1845.

"A fire has occurred," he recorded in the entry of that date, "the loss
of which is probably $5,000,000; several of the insurance companies are