IX FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 165 X TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 183 XI THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 199 XII CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 211 XIII A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 226 XIV THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 244 XV GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 255 XVI BEYOND MURRAY HILL 266 XVII APPROACHING THE PLAZA 285 XVIII STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 297 XIX MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 312 ILLUSTRATIONS "Massive and splendidly Gothic is St. Thomas's. The church dates from 1825. In 1867 the present site was secured, and the brown-stone edifice of the early seventies was for nearly two generations the ultra-fashionable Episcopal church of the city" Frontispiece FACING PAGE The Washington Arch. A splendid sentinel guarding the approach to the Avenue. Beyond, houses dating from the thirties of the last century, that mark the beginning of the Stretch of Tradition 14 At the northeast corner of the Avenue and Tenth Street is the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, built in 1840, and consecrated November 5, 1841. It belongs to a part of the Avenue, from the Square to Twelfth Street, which has changed little since 1845 32 Madison Square. Yesterday it was the home of the Flora McFlimsies of the William Allen Butler poem "Nothing to Wear." Today, in the eyes of the Manhattanite, it is the centre of the Universe 68 "The Tower of the Metropolitan Building. Whatever artists may think of it the tower is, structurally, one of the wonders of the world. Exactly halfway between sidewalk and point of spire is the great clock with the immense dials" 86 In the bright sunlight the Avenue glitters with the pavillions of patriotism. Old Glory may be counted by the tens of thousands; England's Union Jack, and the Tricolour of France by the thousands. To forestall the Kaiser the Avenue is "coming across" 112 Where the Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street cross stands the building popularly known as the Knickerbocker Trust Company. Here, in the middle of the last century, "Sarsaparilla" Townsend built in brown-stone, and A.T. Stewart later built in white marble 136 "At the northwest corner of Fifty-fourth Street is the University Club, to the mind of Arnold Bennett ('Your United States'), the finest of all the fine structures that line the Avenue" 172