While it lasted, before novelists, playwrights, professors and ministers of the Gospel abandoned their proper sphere to destroy it, that Golden Age was heaven; the New Jerusalem—­in which we had ceased to believe—­would have been in the nature of an anticlimax to any of our archangels of finance who might have attained it.  The streets of our own city turned out to be gold; gold likewise the acres of unused, scrubby land on our outskirts, as the incident of the Riverside Franchise—­which I am about to relate—­amply proved.

That scheme originated in the alert mind of Mr. Frederick Grierson, and in spite of the fact that it has since become notorious in the eyes of a virtue-stricken public, it was entered into with all innocence at the time:  most of the men who were present at the “magnate’s” table at the Boyne Club the day Mr. Grierson broached it will vouch for this.  He casually asked Mr. Dickinson if he had ever noticed a tract lying on the river about two miles beyond the Heights, opposite what used to be in the old days a road house.

“This city is growing so fast, Leonard,” said Grierson, lighting a special cigar the Club kept for him, “that it might pay a few of us to get together and buy that tract, have the city put in streets and sewers and sell it in building lots.  I think I can get most of it at less than three hundred dollars an acre.”

Mr. Dickinson was interested.  So were Mr. Ogilvy and Ralph Hambleton, and Mr. Scherer, who chanced to be there.  Anything Fred Grierson had to say on the question of real estate was always interesting.  He went on to describe the tract, its size and location.

“That’s all very well, Fred,” Dickinson objected presently, “but how are your prospective householders going to get out there?”

“Just what I was coming to,” cried Grierson, triumphantly, “we’ll get a franchise, and build a street-railroad out Maplewood Avenue, an extension of the Park Street line.  We can get the franchise for next to nothing, if we work it right.” (Mr. Grierson’s eye fell on me), “and sell it out to the public, if you underwrite it, for two million or so.”

“Well, you’ve got your nerve with you, Fred, as usual,” said Dickinson.  But he rolled his cigar in his mouth, an indication, to those who knew him well, that he was considering the matter.  When Leonard Dickinson didn’t say “no” at once, there was hope.  “What do you think the property holders on Maplewood Avenue would say?  Wasn’t it understood, when that avenue was laid out, that it was to form part of the system of boulevards?”

“What difference does it make what they say?” Ralph interposed.

Dickinson smiled.  He, too, had an exaggerated respect for Ralph.  We all thought the proposal daring, but in no way amazing; the public existed to be sold things to, and what did it matter if the Maplewood residents, as Ralph said; and the City Improvement League protested?

Perry Blackwood was the Secretary of the City Improvement League, the object of which was to beautify the city by laying out a system of parkways.