portrait of Robert Burns—­would there be any more propitious place in New York at which to fashion verses?  There would be no interruptions, such as make versifying almost impossible in a newspaper office.  The friendly bartenders in their lilac-coloured shirts are wise and gracious men.  They would not break in upon one’s broodings.  Every now and then, while the hot sun smote the awnings outside, there would be another china mug of that one-half-of-1-per-cent. ale, which seems to us very good.  We repeat:  we don’t care so much what we drink as the surroundings among which we drink it.  We are not, if you will permit the phrase, sot in our ways.  We like the spirit of McSorley’s, which is decent, dignified, and refined.  No club has an etiquette more properly self-respecting.

One does not go to McSorley’s without a glimpse at that curious old red pile Bible House.  It happened this way:  Our friend Endymion was back from his vacation and we were trying to celebrate it in modest fashion.  We were telling him all the things that had happened since he went away—­that Bob Holliday had had a fortieth birthday, and Frank Shay had published his bibliography of Walt Whitman, and all that sort of thing; and in our mutual excitement Endymion whisked too swiftly round a corner and caught his jacket on a sharp door-latch and tore it.  Inquiring at Astor Place’s biggest department store as to where we could get it mended, they told us to go to “Mr. Wright the weaver” on the sixth floor of Bible House, and we did so.  On our way back, avoiding the ancient wire rope elevator (we know only one other lift so delightfully mid-Victorian, viz., one in Boston, that takes you upstairs to see Edwin Edgett, the gentle-hearted literary editor of the Boston Transcript), we walked down the stairs, peeping into doorways in great curiosity.  The whole building breathed a dusky and serene quaintness that pricks the imagination.  It is a bit like the shop in Edinburgh (on the corner of the Leith Walk and Antigua Street, if we remember) that R.L.S. described in “A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured”—­“it was dark and smelt of Bibles.”  We looked in at the entrance to the offices of the Christian Herald.  The Bowling Green thought that what he saw was two young ladies in close and animated converse; but Endymion insisted that it was one young lady doing her hair in front of a large mirror.  “Quite a pretty little picture,” said Endymion.  We argued about this as we went down the stairs.  Finally we went back to make sure.  Endymion was right.  Even in the darkness of Bible House, we agreed, romance holds sway.  And then we found a book shop on the ground floor of Bible House.  One of our discoveries there was “Little Mr. Bouncer,” by Cuthbert Bede—­a companion volume to “Mr. Verdant Green.”