Pepys, living in the turbulent, densely populated London of our time, and recording day by day the events coming under his observation, would probably have his audience of posterity limited to a little circle of venerating descendants who would certainly bore the neighbours. It is quite easy to picture the members of that circle in the year 1998, or 2024. "Listen to what Grandpapa's Diary says of the awful Zeppelin raids of February, 1917," or, "But Great-grandpapa, who had just finished his walk in the Park, and was passing Downing Street when the news came, etc." "Il est fatiguant," whispered Mr. St. John of General Webb at one of the dinners in "Henry Esmond," "avec sa trompette de Wynandael." That persistent blowing of the "trompette" of grandpapa would likewise be voted "fatiguant." "Grandpapa! A plague upon their grandpapa!" It needed the smaller town, the more limited age, the greater intimacy of life, to make Pepys's Diary the vivid human narrative that it has been for so many years. And as with the Pepys of seventeenth century London, so with the chronicler of events day by day in the New York of the first half of the nineteenth century. If there was a Knickerbocker Pepys it was Philip Hone, who in the span of his life saw his city expand from twenty-five thousand to half a million, and whose diary has been described as one of 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,