Soon she was at Trinity Church. Some years ago, it had been rebuilt in High Gothic style. Its pointed arches and sturdy spire added a note of old-fashioned solemnity to the scene, as if to remind the passer-by that the Protestant money men of Wall Street, who frequented it, preserved a faith just as good as any piety from medieval times. Opposite its doors, however, Wall Street was more pagan than ever. Why, even the Federal Hall, where Washington had taken his presidential oath, was now replaced with a perfect Greek temple, whose stout columns contained the Custom House.

She gazed ahead. Back in the days of Washington, the houses on Broadway started to peter out into fields and farmsteads a half-mile or so above Wall Street. But now Manhattan was completely built up, from river to river, for another three miles. And each year, the great grid of New York extended further—as if some giant, with a mighty hand, was planting rows of houses every season. In front of her, Broadway’s busy thoroughfare stretched in a wide, straight line for another two miles until it made a half-turn to the north-west, and continued on its way in a great diagonal, up the line of the old Bloomingdale road. Her destination was a good half-mile above that turn.

She came to the old Common. It was still a large triangle of open ground, but some while ago a huge new City Hall had been built there. Like some gaudy French or Italian palace faced with marble, it stared proudly southward down the broad avenue. If one looked across the back of City Hall, however, one noticed a curious thing. The north facade was not faced with marble like the front, but with plain brownstone. At the time it was built, most of the city, and all the best quarters, had lain to the south. There had been no need to spend money on the northern facade therefore, which would only be seen by poor folk. And behind the gaudy palace, in the big, central sink of the city, there were poor folk in abundance.

In Five Points.

Once upon a time, there had been a big old pond there, and the village of freed slaves, with swampy land beyond. The pond and the swamp had still been there in Washington’s day, as the city started to extend northward around it. But then the city authorities had drained them, and lain a canal to draw away the water. And after that, they had built over the canal with streets of brick houses.