Father Knickerbocker, coming to smoke his pipe here, will be in good company, you perceive! The recollections of many living persons who recall the old Square and other parts of early New York, bring forcibly to us the realisation of the speed with which this country of ours has evolved itself.

In one man's lifetime, New York has grown from a small town just out of its Colonial swaddling clothes to the greatest city in the world.

These reminiscences, then, are but memories of yesterday or the day before.
We do not have to take them from history books but from the diaries of men and women who are still wide-eyed with wonder at the changes which have come to their city! "The town was filled with beautiful trees," says one man (who remembers Commodore Vanderbilt, with the splendid horses, the fine manner and the unexampled profane eloquence), "but the pavements were very dirty.

Places like St.John's Park and Abingdon Square were quiet and sweet and secluded.

Where West Fourth Street and West Eleventh Street met it was so still you could almost hear the grass grow between the cobblestones! Everything near the Square was extremely exclusive and fashionable.