And, of course, there were the bakeshop emitting enticing smells, mostly of currants and burnt sugar, and the hardware store, full of nails and pocket-knives, and old Mr. Jacobs, the tailor, who sat cross-legged on a wide table in a room down four stone steps from the sidewalk, and the grog-shops—­more’s the pity—­ one on every corner save Kling’s.

Hardly a trace is now left of any one of them, so sudden and overwhelming has been the march of modern progress.  Even the little Peter Cooper House, picked up bodily by that worthy philanthropist and set down here nearly a hundred years ago, is gone, and so are the row of musty, red-bricked houses at the lower end of this Little City in Itself.  And so are the tenants of this musty old row, shady locksmiths with a tendency toward skeleton keys; ingenious upholsterers who indulged in paper-hanging on the sly; shoemakers who did half-soling and heeling, their day’s work set to dry on the window-sill, not to mention those addicted to the use of the piano, banjo, or harp, as well as the wig and dress makers who lightened the general gloom.

And with the disappearance of these old landmarks—­ and it all took place within less than ten years—­there disappeared, also, the old family life of “The Avenue,” in which each home shared in the good-fellowship of the whole, all of them contributing to that sane and sustaining stratum, if we did but know it, of our civic structure—­facts that but few New Yorkers either recognize or value.

On the block below Kling’s in those other days was the quaint Book Shop owned by Tim Kelsey, the hunchback, a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge, much of it as musty and out of date as most of his books; while overtopping all else in importance, so far as this story is concerned, was the shabby, old-fashioned two-story house known the town over as the Express Office of John and Kitty Cleary, sporting above its narrow street-door a swinging sign informing inquirers that trunks were carried for twenty-five cents.

And not only trunks, but all of the movable furniture up and down the avenue, and most of that from the adjacent regions, found their way in and out of the Cleary wagons.  Indeed Otto Kling’s confidence in Kitty—­and Kitty was really the head of the concern —­was so great that he always refused to allow any of her rivals to carry his purchases and sales, even at a reduced price, a temptation seldom resisted by the economical Dutchman.

Nor did the friendly relations end here.  Not only did Kitty’s man Mike hammer up at night the rusty iron shutters protecting Kling’s side window, clean away the snow before his store, and lend a hand in the moving of extra-heavy pieces, but he was even known to wash the windows and kindle a fire.