the Sapphire.  And some way farther down (at the corner of White Street) is a jolly old tavern which looked so antique and inviting that we went inside.  Little tables piled high with hunks of bread betokened the approaching lunch hour.  A shimmering black cat winked a drowsy topaz eye from her lounge in the corner.  We asked for cider.  There was none, but our gaze fell upon a bottle marked “Irish Moss.”  We asked for some, and the barkeep pushed the bottle forward with a tiny glass.  Irish Moss, it seems, is the kind of drink which the customer pours out for himself, so we decanted a generous slug.  It proved to be a kind of essence of horehound, of notable tartness and pungency, very like a powerful cough syrup.  We wrote it off on our ledger as experience.  Beside us stood a sturdy citizen with a freight hook round his neck, deducing a foaming crock of the legitimate percentage.

The chief landmark of that stretch of West Broadway is the tall spire of St. Alphonsus’ Church, near Canal Street.  Up the steps and through plain brown doors we went into the church, which was cool, quiet, and empty, save for a busy charwoman with humorous Irish face.  Under the altar canopy wavered a small candle spark, and high overhead, in the dimness, were orange and scarlet gleams from a stained window.  A crystal chandelier hanging in the aisle caught pale yellow tinctures of light.  No Catholic church, wherever you find it, is long empty; a man and a girl entered just as we went out.  At each side of the front steps the words Copiosa apud eum redemtio are carved in the stone.  The mason must have forgotten the p in the last word.  A silver plate on the brick house next door says Redemptorist Fathers.

York Street, running off to the west, gives a glimpse of the old Hudson River Railroad freight depot.  St. John’s Lane, running across York Street, skirts the ruins of old St. John’s Church, demolished when the Seventh Avenue subway was built.  On the old brown house at the corner some urchin has chalked the word CRAZY.  Perhaps this is an indictment of adult civilization as a whole.  If one strolls thoughtfully about some of these streets—­say Thompson Street—­on a hot day, and sees the children struggling to grow up, he feels like going back to that word CRAZY and italicizing it.  The tiny triangle of park at Beach Street is carefully locked up, you will notice—­the only plot of grass in that neighbourhood—­so that bare feet cannot get at it.  Superb irony of circumstance:  on the near corner stands the Castoria factory, Castoria being (if we remember the ads) what Mr. Fletcher gave baby when she was sick.