Where it crosses Fourteenth Street it struts for a brief moment proudly
in the glare of the museums and cheap theatres. It may yet become a fit
mate for its high-born sister boulevard to the west, or its roaring,
polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east. It passes Union Square; and
here the hoofs of the dray horses seem to thunder in unison, recalling
the tread of marching hosts--Hooray! But now come the silent and
terrible mountains--buildings square as forts, high as the clouds,
shutting out the sky, where thousands of slaves bend over desks all day.
On the ground floors are only little fruit shops and laundries and book
shops, where you see copies of "Littell's Living Age" and G. W. M.
Reynold's novels in the windows. And next--poor Fourth Avenue!--the
street glides into a mediaeval solitude. On each side are shops devoted
to "Antiques."
Let us say it is night. Men in rusty armor stand in the windows and
menace the hurrying cars with raised, rusty iron gauntlets. Hauberks and
helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and
the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully
in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon (lit with
Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound
citizens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown
that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the fighting
dead.
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