72 A CENTUKY HENCE. 



Elizabetliport and back on pleasant spring mornings, or when their 

 eyes looked love to eyes responsive on the shaded walks of Bard and 

 Franklin avenues. A truce to sentiment, however. Let's out and to 

 the City Hall, a marble pile on Lafayette avenue. It covers an area 

 five times as great as that on which stood its brick predecessor, built 

 by Supervisor Moore, a mighty man in politics in his day. We ascend 

 the steps of this magnificent capitol of municipal government. To the 

 right of the ample hall is the entrance to the chamber in which the city 

 fathers deliberate. One hundred and twenty feet in length by eighty feet 

 in depth, it is simply yet exquisite^ finished in hard woods. Twenty- 

 eight of the Aldermen are in their places ; the others are absent for va- 

 riou ssufficient reasons, but none are in Canada. A very old man, a man 

 with locks as white as the first of winter's snow, is apparently ad- 

 dressing the dignified body. You can hardly hear him as he speaks, 

 and his voice seems to be but a very thin piping. Hark ! it grows 

 stronger — just a trifle, perhaps, yet stronger, and I think I hear — 

 don't 3 r ou? — the words "Jersey street." Now he turns his face to- 

 ward us. That bronzed face is familiar ; that large nose we have 

 seen before ; those eyes, not yet lustreless, have in days gone by 

 gazed upon us. The gestures — whose gestures are they ? I am not 

 dreaming ! — You, too, must recall them. They are the gestures, that 

 is the face and that the accent of Health Officer Dr. Theodore Walser, 

 of New Brighton, that was, and he is still pleading, with abated vigor 

 but with unabated persistence, for a sewer in Jersey street. 



Let's on, companion of my wanderings, let's on! And mark you, 

 no philosophizing; keep that for the closet. 



" Let observation with extensive view 

 Survey mankind from China to Peru." 



Here we find Richmond Square marked in the city maps as on the 

 site of the count} r seat a hundred years ago. From it radiate twelve 

 lines of pneumatic railway. Yfe'll travel thence by way of the Davis 

 avenue route, lighted by electricity throughout and with swinging 

 fans in each car. To Richmond Square in seven seconds, through 

 time, is very fair travelling indeed. What a wonderful change the 

 hands and brains of men have wrought in this sleepy hamlet since 

 Stephen D. Stephens, gathered to his fathers fifty years since, sat 

 yonder in an ancient but substantial looking building which covered 



