The most aristocratic street in that city is named North Meridian Street. A street, until a short time ago, entirely of stately lawns and patrician homes--mansions. Of late, a little business, shops of the most distinguished character, has been creeping up this street from down-town. Notably, de luxe motor car salesrooms, studios of highly æsthetic photographers, and particularly palatial undertaking establishments. They are, these last, wondrous halls, which surely none could enter but those who (in life) had been rich in treasure. Features of the city are they--"sights." But here's the riddle: Strolling about New York, from river to river, uptown and down, one might readily fancy that here only the poor pass out of the world. Or that if the rich and fashionable ever die their bodies are mysteriously spirited away to destinations unknown; or are secretly preserved (presumably by some taxidermal process) in their homes. Why? Well, where on Fifth Avenue is an undertaker's? True, a man I know declares there is a single one there. I am unable to find it. Where on any fine street of the metropolis? Why, yes; as a rare phenomenon. You do know, of course, that enormous place on upper Broadway. Sign says branches in Paris, London, Berlin, Petrograd. Viewed through the great windows interior presents somewhat the effect of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In foreground large harp, equally huge Chinese vase--probably of the Tang Wang period, on great marble pedestal enormous bronze of a mounted Diana repelling with spear attack of ferocious animal resembling tiger. Appropriateness of this sculpture somewhat puzzling. On wall, somewhat further within, immense tapestry. One door labelled "Delivery Entrance." All of this, of course, is magnificence as much as even the most covetous would crave. But in New York this august undertaking hall is an anachronism. Here, for some reason mysterious, it is in shabby neighborhoods that the "parlors" of undertakers abound. You may find them sprinkled all about the lower East Side. Frequent on Hudson Street, and, say, on Varick. Quaint and curious places, these. Very human in their appeal. Tiny places, most of them. One such cozy crib I know on Greenwich Avenue. Has a stained glass screen in the window, suggesting a good deal the style of window ornamentation popular with that American institution lately deceased--the saloon. The social spirit rife in small undertaking shops, at least in some of them, is pleasant to observe. Business there not being pressing, and life moving in these inns of death in a leisurely and quiet current, neighborly amenities appear to be much cultivated.