That was one of the few times in America when I did not miss the poetry of the past. The poetry of the present, gigantic, colossal, and enormous, made me forget it. The "sky-scrapers," so splendid in the landscape now, did not exist in 1883; but I find it difficult to divide my early impressions from my later ones. There was Brooklyn Bridge, though, hung up high in the air like a vast spider's web. Between 1883 and 1893 I noticed a great change in New York and other cities. In ten years they seemed to have grown with the energy of tropical plants. But between 1893 and 1907 I saw no evidence of such feverish increase. It is possible that the Americans are arriving at a stage when they can no longer beat the record! There is a vast difference between one of the old New York brownstone houses and one of the fourteen-storied buildings near the river, but between this and the Times Square Building or the still more amazing Flatiron Building, which is said to oscillate at the top--it is so far from the ground--there is very little difference. I hear that they are now beginning to build downwards into the earth, but this will not change the appearance of New York for a long time. [Illustration: _From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley_ HENRY IRVING AS MATHIAS IN "THE BELLS" THE PART IN WHICH IRVING MADE HIS FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA] I had not to endure the wooden shed in which most people landing in America have to struggle with the custom-house officials--a struggle as brutal as a "round in the ring" as Paul Bourget describes it. We were taken off the "Britannic" in a tug, and Mr. Abbey, Lawrence Barrett, and many other friends met us--including the much-dreaded reporters. [Illustration: _Lent by The Century Co._ THE REJECTED DESIGN FOR A COLUMBIAN MEDAL MADE BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS] When we landed, I drove to the Hotel Dam, Henry to the Brevoort House. There was no Diana on the top of the Madison Square Building then--the building did not exist, to cheer the heart of a new arrival as the first evidence of _beauty_ in the city. There were horse trams instead of cable cars; but a quarter of a century has not altered the peculiarly dilapidated carriages in which one drives from the dock, the muddy sidewalks, and the cavernous holes in the cobble-paved streets. Had the elevated railway, the first sign of _power_ that one notices after leaving the boat, begun to thunder through the streets? I cannot remember New York without it. [Illustration: _Lent by The Century Co._ THE BAS-RELIEF PORTRAIT OF BASTIEN-LEPAGE MODELED BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS. SAINT-GAUDENS GAVE A CAST OF THE PORTRAIT TO MISS TERRY]