Street was by no means the sole haunt of the aristocracy, but it was very representative, very important, very select. There was even a time when to live there at all conferred a certain patent of respectability. It was forgiven you that your daughter had married an obscure Smith, or that your son had linked his lot with an undesirable Jones, if you had once come permanently to dwell there. The whole short, broad street was superlatively genteel. Nothing quite describes it like that pregnant little word. It dined at two o'clock; it had "tea" at six; its parties were held as dissipated if they broke up after midnight; its young men "called" on its young women of an evening with ceremonious regularity, never at such times donning the evening-coat and the white neck-tie which now so widely obtain, but infallibly wearing these on all occasions of afternoon festivity with an unconcern of English usage that would keenly shock many of their descendants.

But by degrees the old order changed. Commerce pushed northward with relentless energy. Its advance still left Bond Street uninvaded, but here and there the roomy brick dwellings received distinctly plebeian inmates. One night, in this street formerly so dedicated to the calm of refinement, a frightful murder occurred. No one who lived in New York at that time can fail to remember the Burdell assassination. It was surrounded by all the most melodramatic luridness of commission. Its victim was a dentist, slaughtered at midnight with many wounds from an unknown hand. The mysterious deed shook our whole city with dismay. For weeks it was a topic that superseded all others. To search through old newspapers of the excited days that followed is to imagine oneself on the threshold of a thrilling tale, in which the wrong culprits are arraigned and the real offender hides himself behind so impregnable an ambush that nothing but a final chapter can overthrow it. Yet in this ghastly affair of the stabbed dentist a protracted trial resulted in a tame acquittal and no more. The story ended abruptly and midway. It lies to-day as alluring material for the writer of harrowing fiction. It still retains all the ghastly piquancy of an undiscovered crime.

The vast surrounding populace of New York have long ago learned to forget it, but there would be truth in the assertion that Bond Street recalls it still. Its garish publicity scared away the last of her fine-bred denizens. The retreat was haughty and gradual, but it is now absolute. Where Ten Eyck and Van Horn had engraved their names in burly letters on sheeny door-plates, you may see at present the flaunting signs of a hair-dresser, a beer-seller, a third-rate French restaurateur, a furrier, a flower-maker, and an intercessor between despairing authors and obdurate publishers. The glory of Bond Street has departed. Its region has become lamentably "down town." The spoilers possess it with undisputed rule. It is in one sense a melancholy ruin, in another a sprightly transformation.

But several years before its decadence turned unargued fact (and now we near a time that almost verges upon the present), Mr. Hamilton Varick, a gentleman well past fifty, brought into perhaps the most spacious mansion of the street a bride scarcely eighteen. Mr. Varick had lived abroad for many years, chiefly in Paris. He was a tall, spare man, with a white jaunty mustache and a black eye full of fire. He was extremely rich, and unless remote relations were considered, heirless. It was generally held that he had come home to end his days after a life of foreign folly and gallantry. This may at first have seemed wholly true, but it also occurred that he had chosen to end them in the society of a blooming young wife.

His Bond Street house, vacant for years, suddenly felt the embellishing spell of the upholsterer. Mr. Varick had meanwhile dropped into the abodes of old friends not seen in twenty years, had shaken hands, with a characteristic lightsome cordiality, right and left, had beamingly taken upon his lap the children of mothers and fathers who were once his youthful comrades in dance and rout, had reminded numerous altered acquaintances who he was, had been reminded in turn by numerous other altered acquaintances who they were, had twisted his white mustache, had talked with airy patriotism about getting back to die in one's native land, had deplored his long absence from the dear scenes of youth, had regretted secretly his transpontine Paris, had murmured his bad, witty French mots to whatever matron would hear them, had got himself re-made a member of the big, smart Metropolitan Club which he thought a mere tiresome sort of parochial tavern when he last left it, and had finally amazed everyone by marrying the young and lovely Miss Pauline Van Corlear.

Pauline herself had very little to do with the whole arrangement. She was the only child of a widowed mother who had long ago designed to marry her notably. Mrs. Van Corlear lived upon a very meagre income, and had been an invalid since Pauline was eight. But she had educated her daughter with a good deal of patient care, and had ultimately, at the proper age, relegated her to the chaperonage of a more prosperous sister, who had launched her forth into society with due élan. Pauline was not a good match in the mercenary sense; she was perfectly well aware of the fact; she had been brought up to understand it. But she was fair to see, and perhaps she understood this a little too well.

New York was then what so many will remember it to have been about twelve years ago. The civil war had left few traces of disaster; it was the winter of seventy-one. Wall Street was in a hey-day of hazardous prosperity; sumptuous balls were given by cliques of the most careful entertainers; a number of ladies who had long remained unfashionable, yet who had preserved an inherited right to assert social claim when they chose, now came to the front. These matrons proved a strong force, and resisted in sturdy confederacy all efforts of outsiders to break their dainty ranks. They shielded under maternal wings a delightful bevy of blooming young maidens, among whom was Pauline Van Corlear.

It was a season of amusing conflict. Journalism had not yet learned to fling its lime-light of notoriety upon the doings and mis-doings of private individuals. Young girls did not wake then, as now, on the morning after a ball, to read (or with jealous heart-burning not to read) minute descriptions of their toilets on the previous night. The "society column" of the New York newspaper was still an unborn abomination. Had this not been the case, a great deal of pungent scandal might easily have found its way into print. The phalanx of assertive matrons roundly declared that they had found society in a deplorable condition. The balls, receptions and dinners were all being given by a horde of persons without grandfathers. The reigning belles were mostly a set of loud, rompish girls, with names that rang unfamiliarly. The good old people had nearly all been drowsing inactive during several winters; one could hardly discover an Amsterdam, a Spuytenduyvil, a Van Schuylkill, among this unpleasant rabble. There had been quite too many of these spurious pretenders. Legitimacy must uplift its debased standards.

Legitimacy did so, and with a will. Some very fine and spacious mansions in districts bordering or approximate to Washington Square were hospitably thrown open, besides others of a smarter but less time-honored elegance in "up-town" environments. The new set, as it was called, carried things by storm. They were for the most part very rich people, and they spent their wealth with a lavish freedom that their lineage saved from the least charge of vulgarity. No display of money is ever considered vulgar when lineage is behind it. If you are unblessed with good descent you must air your silver dishes cautiously and heed well the multiplicity of your viands; for though your cook possess an Olympian palate and your butler be the ex-adherent of a king, the accusation of bad taste hangs like a