You remember what a celebrated irascible character said about a circulating library in a town.  Be that as it may.  As you stroll along Broadway, up from Seventy-second Street, you observe, being a person of highly alert mind, an astonishing number of circulating libraries, devoted exclusively to the latest fiction.  And you note that all corner drug stores and all stationers’ shops present a window display of “50-cent fiction.”  Ah! refinement.  Reading people are nice people; they are not rough people.  There is, you feel at once, an air, there is taste—­how shall I say?—­selectness, about this part of town.  It is not as other parts of town are.

You perceive, as you continue your stroll with a brightened and a more perfumed mind, that there are no shoe stores here.  Shoo stores!!  “Booteries,” these are.  Combined with “hosieries.”  Countless are the smart hat shops for women.  That is to say, the establishments of “chapeaux importers.”  In the miniature parlours framed by the windows’ glass these chic and ravishing creations, the chapeaux, rise in a row high upon their slim and lovely stems.  This one is the establishment of Mlle. Edythe, that of Mme. Vigneau.  Countless, too, are the terrestrial heavens devoted to “gowns.”  Headless they stand, these symphonies in feminine apparel, side by side here in the windows of the Maison la Mode, there of the Maison Estelle.  Frequent are the places where the figure is cultivated with famous corsets, the retreats of “corsetieres”; this one before you bears the name Fayette; it is where the model “Madame Pompadour” is sold.  And numerous are shops luxuriating in waists, “blouses,” lingerie, and “novelties” of dress.  Conspicuous among them, the “Dolly Dimple Shop.”  The many “furriers” here all deal in “exclusive” furs and their names all end in “sky.”

And there are roses, roses all the way.  That is to say, “roseries,” “violeteries,” and the like—­what we call florists’ shops, you know.  Spots of gorgeous colour and intense fragrance, heaped high with orchids, violets, roses, gardenias, or, in some cases, “artificial flowers.”

See! the luscious wax busts in the window.  With their grandes coiffures.  And their pink and yellow bosoms resplendent with gems.  It is a hair-dresser’s, just as in London, with a gentlemen’s parlour at the back.  “Structures” are made here in human hair, and “marcel waving” is done, not, however, we may suppose, for gentlemen.  Here may be had an “olive oil shampoo,” and a “facial massage.”  One could be “manicured” in the stroll you are taking every ten minutes or so, if one wished.  And “hair cutting” is done along this way by artistes from various lands.  There is, for instance, the Peluqueria Espanola.  “Service,” too, is offered “at residence.”  Beauty here is held in esteem as it was among the Greeks.  Upon one side of the “chemist’s” window “toilet requisites” are announced for sale.  The “valet system” is extensively advertised.  The industry of “dry cleansing” nourishes, and the “shoe renovator” abounds.  And hats are “renovated,” and “blocked,” and “ironed,” in places without number.