Thackeray, who had a quick
and trained eye for the characteristic in cities, delighted in Broadway,
for its cheerful variety, its perpetual "comedy of life"; the
significance whereof is only more apparent to the sympathetic observer,
because now and then through the eager throng glides the funeral car to
the sound of muffled drums, the "Black Maria" with its convict load, or
the curtained hospital litter with its dumb and maimed burden. And then,
to the practised frequenter, how, one by one, endeared figures and faces
disappear from that diurnal stage! It seems but yesterday since we met
there Dr. Francis's cheering salutation, or listened to Dr. Bethune's
and Fenno Hoffman's genial and John Stephens's truthful talk,--watched
General Scott's stalwart form, Dr. Kane's lithe frame, Cooper's
self-reliant step, Peter Parley's juvenile cheerfulness,--and grasped
Henry Inman's cordial hand, or listened to Irving's humorous
reminiscence, and met the benign smile of dear old Clement Moore. As to
fairer faces and more delicate shapes,--to encounter which was the
crowning joy of our promenade,--and "cheeks grown holy with the lapse of
years," memory holds them too sacred for comment. "Passing away" is the
perpetual refrain in the chorus of humanity in this bustling
thoroughfare, to the sober eye of maturity.
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