Quaint little ladies of Gothamtown--quaint little old-time figures!--flitting in and out of your ancient homes like shadows!--who cares to-day for your petty gifts, your plans, and jealousies? Only one or two remember you. The walks you trod are vanishing, the water-front gardens where you smiled and languished at sedate gentlemen are mostly hidden 'neath bricks and mortar, and the very buildings you were born in, that stood so long impervious to the rude hands of progress, are being demolished. Those musty garments of Juma's "ole Miss," the friend of Mrs. Rumbell, are now folded in some attic trunk with your own pet vanities. What would the haughty Miss Georgina have said if she could have gazed through the door of the future and seen a Scruggins brat grown into a leader of fashion and carrying her own tortoise fan--sold with other Knickerbocker effects at the last vendue? [Illustration] If one had loitered in Vesey Street that afternoon before Easter so many years past, one would, no doubt, have joined the stragglers about the gates of Snograss House, and watched the members of St. Paul's Easter Guild mince up Broadway, carefully keeping to the pave. The Flying Swan from Elizabethtown was due at four o'clock, and those timid ladies of the long ago knew that the swaying, swaggering bedlam of a coach would enjoy spattering them as it rattled up to the City Hotel. On the porch of that fine hostelry, where Mr. Clarke once wooed his muse and scores of thirsty throats the wine-cup, stood the host, Davy Juniper, whose very name was synonymous with cheer. Through the half-opened door came loud gusts of unceremonious laughter as the portly innkeeper, curveting on tiptoe, swung his garland of Easter green over the sign-board. Davy's eyes were riveted on the flashing colors of feminine gear across the street. Now Mrs. Rumbell tottered by and bobbed to him; now a bevy of the Scruggins set passed the house opposite, and gazed in, like forbidden Peris at the door of Paradise. Sometimes the street was covered with pedestrians. The quality abroad affected the good man's spirits. He began to pipe some merry verses from a tap-room ditty: Major Macpherson heav'd a sigh, Tol, de diddle, dol, dol; And Major Macpherson didn't know why, Tol, de diddle, dol, dol; But Major Macpherson soon found out, Tol, de diddle, dol, dol; 'Twas all for Miss Lavinia Scout, Tol, de diddle, dol, dol. The night was creeping on, clear and cold, and there would be full settles about his waggish fires. In the sky, puffs of fleecy clouds were hurrying away like sheep eager to reach the fold of mother-dusk. Off in the west, where twilight parted her curtains, glowed faint streaks of yellow and rose color, promises of daffodil meadows and flower-strewn lands to come.