When America was born, the march had already
begun to hasten, and as a nation we began, in our first hour, at the
quickening speed. Now the pace is a race. New York is a kaleidoscope.
I myself can remember it a wholly different thing. One passes down a
street one day, and the next there is a great gap where some building
is being torn down--a few days later, a tall structure of some sort
is touching the sky. It is wonderful, but it does not tend to calm the
mind. That is why we cross the Atlantic so much. The sober, quiet-loving
blood our forbears brought from older countries goes in search of rest.
Mixed with other things, I feel in my own being a resentment
against newness and disorder, and an insistence on the atmosphere of
long-established things."
But for years Lady Anstruthers had been living in the atmosphere of
long-established things, and felt no insistence upon it. She yearned to
hear of the great, changing Western world--of the great, changing city.
Betty must tell her what the changes were. What were the differences
in the streets--where had the new buildings been placed? How had Fifth
Avenue and Madison Avenue and Broadway altered? Were not Gramercy
Park and Madison Square still green with grass and trees? Was it all
different? Would she not know the old places herself? Though it seemed a
lifetime since she had seen them, the years which had passed were really
not so many.
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