And yet so few, comparatively, of those whose physique and office hours permit, take this appetizing, worry-dispelling walk of ours; this is made obvious every afternoon, from three o'clock on, by the surface and elevated cars, into which the bulk of scowling New York seems to prefer to push itself, after a day spent mostly indoors; here to get bumped and ill-tempered, snatching an occasional glimpse of the afternoon paper held in the hand which does not clutch the strap overhead. It seems a great pity. The walk is just the right length to take before dressing for dinner. A line drawn eastward from the park plaza at Fifty-eighth Street will almost strike an old mile-stone still standing in Third Avenue, which says, "4 miles from City Hall, New York." The City Hall was in Wall Street when those old-fashioned letters were cut, and Third Avenue was the Post Road. [Illustration: The beautiful spire of Trinity] I Many good New Yorkers (chiefly, however, of that small per cent. born in New York, who generally know rather little about their town except that they love it) have not been so remotely far down the island as Battery Park for a decade, unless to engage passage at the steamship offices which until recently were to be found in the sturdy houses of the good old Row (though once called "Mushroom Row") opposite the oval of the ancient Bowling Green, where now the oddly placed statue of Abram de Peyster sits and stares all day. (Now that these old gable windows and broad chimneys are gone I wonder how he will like the new Custom-house.) [Illustration: ... clattering, crowded, typical Broadway] Now, the grandmothers of these same New Yorkers, long ago, before there were any steamships, when Castle Garden was a separate island and Battery Park was a fashionable esplanade from which to watch the shipping in the bay and the sunsets over the Jersey hills--their grandmothers, dressed in tight pelisses and carrying reticules, were wont to take a brisk walk, in their very low-cut shoes, along the sea-wall before breakfast and breathe the early morning air. They did not have so far to go in those days, and it was a fashionable thing to do. To-day you can see almost every variety of humanity on the cement paths from Pier A to Castle Garden, except that known as fashionable. But the sunsets are just as good and the lights on the gentle hills of Staten Island quite as soft and there are more varieties of water-craft to gaze at in the bristling bay. I should think more people would come to look at it all. [Illustration: ... City Hall with its grateful lack of height ...] I mean of those even who do not like to mingle with other species than their own and yet want fresh air and exercise. On a Sunday in winter if they were to come down here for their afternoon stroll they would find (after a pleasant trip on nearly empty elevated cars) less "objectionable" people and fewer of them than on the crowded up-town walks.