Unlike us poor mortals, cities die and are reborn. Who of you whose locks are graying around the temples, visiting the place of your birth, would recognize it as the city of your boyhood days? Only here and there have the world’s largest cities retained their ancient sameness. I knew New York when it was far different from the town it is today, and in it I passed the happiest days of my life. We old-timers realize this more poignantly as we grow older and look back. Thinking of the high cost of living today, I recall Dolan’s restaurant, the most noted among the many coffee and cake places spread in that busy downtown section of New York. Dolan’s was in the old Potter Building on Park Row, the gathering place for the humble and the big shots in the field of journalism. Ham and beans was the most delicious dish. The most called-for item on the menu, it could be obtained for only ten cents with an additional five cents for a cup of java. One could have his choice of ham or corned beef, and with it went bread and butter on the side. And the sinker! For ten cents one could have his coffee and biscuits soaked in warm butter. We called this the sinker dish, much like the coffee and doughnuts we get today. Within minutes after a paper was put to press—usually about eleven o’clock at night—a rush was made for Dolan’s. Office boys, compositors, printers’ devils, editors, and reporters—they all made a bee-line for the beanery. The place was known as a newspaperman’s institution. Scarcely an editor in Park Row’s newspaper environ wasn’t a habitué of this famous eating place. And then there was Perry’s “drug store” where one could get drinks at all times of the day or night. That was situated in the old World Building and was an exceedingly popular drinking emporium. The literary geniuses of Park Row were its patrons. This old New York has long passed. Its heart is still beating, the same streets remain, many of its old buildings are still standing, scores of persons whose acquaintance I made when I was a cub reporter, continue to enjoy its pleasures—but it is not the same city in which I grew up. The Old Madison Square Garden, the very heart of New York, is gone, and figuratively speaking, that was New York to us. You could ask a New Yorker how to get to the Museum of Natural History, the Aquarium, City Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and other noted buildings, and he would hesitate, but he could direct you to Madison Square Garden on 26th Street and Madison Avenue without difficulty. After telling you the easiest way to reach it, he’d probably wind up by asking you, “What’s going on there tonight?” The Old Garden is gone, but in its place is a new one, the building I call home during business hours, and like the one which Stanford White designed, it is the rendezvous of both fans and athletes from all over the world.