sells wholesale and retail. I have no doubt that the authors have
rooms in the attics where the other slight initiatory step is taken
toward the production of literature.

New York is built upon an island, which is I believe about ten
miles long, counting from the southern point at the Battery up to
Carmansville, to which place the city is presumed to extend
northward. This island is called Manhattan, a name which I have
always thought would have been more graceful for the city than that
of New York. It is formed by the Sound or East River, which
divides the continent from Long Island by the Hudson River, which
runs into the Sound, or rather joins it at the city foot, and by a
small stream called the Harlem River, which runs out of the Hudson
and meanders away into the Sound at the north of the city, thus
cutting the city off from the main-land. The breadth of the island
does not much exceed two miles, and therefore the city is long, and
not capable of extension in point of breadth. In its old days it
clustered itself round about the Point, and stretched itself up
from there along the quays of the two waters. The streets down in
this part of the town are devious enough, twisting themselves about
with delightful irregularity; but as the city grew there came the
taste for parallelograms, and the upper streets are rectangular and
numbered. Broadway, the street of New York with which the world is
generally best acquainted, begins at the southern point of the town
and goes northward through it. For some two miles and a half it
walks away in a straight line, and then it turns to the left toward
the Hudson. From that time Broadway never again takes a straight
course, but crosses the various avenues in an oblique direction
till it becomes the Bloomingdale Road, and under that name takes
itself out of town. There are eleven so-called avenues, which