About General Grant’s tomb, when Li visited it, a crowd of more than twenty thousand persons was gathered.  From his carriage Li stepped into his chair of state, and was borne to the tomb by four policemen.  At the stairway he left the chair and made his way slowly and laboriously on foot into the vault.  To those about him Li said that this visit to the hero’s tomb was one of the chief things he had in mind in planning his journey to America, and that he had thought of it continually during the trip.  General Horace Porter recalled that Li’s contribution of five hundred dollars, one of the first received, was something that had never been forgotten by the American people.  Other events of the Prime Minister’s stay in New York were his reception of a delegation of American missionary societies, his visits to Chinatown, and to Brooklyn, and the dinner given to him at Delmonico’s the evening of September 2nd.

Earlier events of the Avenue fade into comparative unimportance when we come to September 30, 1899.  For Admiral George Dewey had come home, and Fifth Avenue had the chance to acclaim the victor of Manila Bay.  Down the broad street, from Fifty-ninth Street, under the Arch at Madison Square, and on to Washington Square, the procession in the hero’s honour passed.  This was the order of march: 

  Major-General Roe and Staff. 
  Sousa’s Band. 
  Sailors of the Admiral’s Flagship, the “Olympia.” 
  Admiral Dewey, seated beside Mayor Van Wyck
    of New York in a carriage, at the head of a
    line of carriages containing Governor Roosevelt,
    Rear Admirals Schley and Sampson,
    General Miles, and others. 
  West Point Cadets. 
  United States Regulars. 
  New York National Guard and Naval Militia. 
  National Guard of other States. 
  Union and Confederate Veterans. 
  Veterans of the Spanish War.

When the head of the procession reached Thirty-fourth Street, the sailors from the Admiral’s flagship halted and drew up along the side of the Avenue.  The Admiral left his carriage and entered the reviewing stand at Madison Square.  Admiral Sampson was on his right.  Admiral Schley on his left.  Surrounding them were officers of both branches of the service.  For four hours Admiral Dewey stood there, acknowledging the salutes and saluting the flag.  The following day, October 1st, saw the great naval parade through the waters of the Hudson River.

A decade passed, and then came the Hudson-Fulton celebration of September 25—­October 9, 1909.  Of chief importance to the Avenue was the civic procession of September 28th, when the floats, depicting a great number of historical events, moved down the Avenue to Washington Square.  On the east side of the thoroughfare, from Fortieth to Forty-second Street, opposite the Public Library, there had been erected a Court of Honour.  Against the stately pillars of the Court, the procession moved swiftly by.  Every nation that went into the “melting pot” was represented, with the harped green flag of Ireland at the head of the long column.  Following the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other Irish societies came the Italian organizations, then Poles, English, Dutch, French, Scotch, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Syrian.