In front of them was the Square, containing a
considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden
paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and
round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue,
taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air
which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is
owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of
New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind
of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other
quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more
honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great
longitudinal thoroughfare--the look of having had something of a
social history. It was here, as you might have been informed on good
authority, that you had come into a world which appeared to offer a
variety of sources of interest; it was here that your grandmother
lived, in venerable solitude, and dispensed a hospitality which
commended itself alike to the infant imagination and the infant
palate; it was here that you took your first walks abroad, following
the nursery-maid with unequal step and sniffing up the strange odour
of the ailantus-trees which at that time formed the principal umbrage
of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you were not yet critical
enough to dislike as it deserved; it was here, finally, that your
first school, kept by a broad-bosomed, broad-based old lady with a
ferule, who was always having tea in a blue cup, with a saucer that
didn't match, enlarged the circle both of your observations and your
sensations.
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