The Knickerbocker Pepys grew mellower as he advanced in years. There is a marked change in the tone of the Diary dating from the very time when he himself suffered financial reverses. It was the test of the man that misfortune did not embitter him, but made him more kindly in his judgments of those about him. The smug self-satisfaction belonged to the early days. In the closing years of his useful life there was but one thing that disturbed him greatly. He foresaw the Deluge that was to come. December 12, 1850, was his last Thanksgiving. He wrote: "The annual time-honoured Thanksgiving-day throughout the state. No nation, ancient or modern, ever had more causes for thanksgiving, and reasons to praise the Author of all good, than the people of the United States. Yet there are many, at the present time, ignorant and unworthy of the blessings they enjoy, who would throw all things into confusion, break up the blessed Union which binds the States, and should bind the individuals forming their population; who would destroy the harmony, and condemn the obligations, of Constitution and law. Factionists, traitors, madmen--the Lord preserve us from the unholy influence of such principles!" CHAPTER IV _Glimpses of the Sixties_ Glimpses of the Sixties--At the "Sign of the Buck-horn"--Madison Square in Civil War Times--A Contemporary Chronicler--Mushroom Fortunes--Foreign Adventurers--Filling the Ballroom--Brown of Grace Church--Sunshine and Shadow--The Avenue and the Five Points--The Old Bowery--Blackmail--The Haunts of Chance--Two Famous Poems, William Allen Butler's "Nothing to Wear," and Edmund Clarence Stedman's "The Diamond Wedding." It seems but yesterday that the old Fifth Avenue Hotel passed to the limbo of bygone things. When "Victoria's Royal Son" came to visit us it was new and stately, and held by loyal patriots to be something for strangers from beyond the seas to behold and wonder at. But before the hotel there had been a famous tavern on the site, and then a hippodrome.