New York In Bygone Days - Its Story, Streets And Landmarks

Book excerpt: Verily this Island of Manhattan is exposed to the danger of being snowed under by the showers of works scattered broadcast by her chroniclers, her eulogists, and her critics. Plentiful has been the crop of local commentaries. "New York in bygone days" is a fair type of one species of these city histories. In the main it is composed of gleanings from more ponderous and elaborate works. Mr. Wilson devotes the first volume to the civic development of the city from the first settlements around the fort to the end of the Civil War. The story is fairly well told, without a single touch of originality. Nor is there evidence that the values of the secondary sources were weighed. Extracts are given from Mrs. Lamb, who certainly permitted her pen to wander into pleasant details where verification is impossible. The excuse for being of this "New York" is that the whole story is thrown together and the reader can follow the growth of modern Gotham from its Dutch origins. In the second volume the localities are described. Still some of the personal touches tacked on to places are fresh, a, for instance, a letter from Margaret Fuller when she was the guest of Horace Greeley. Of her host she says, "His abilities in his own way are great. He believes in mine to a surprising extent. We are true friends," — a sequence delightfully suggestive of a select mutual - admiration society. This edition contains both original volumes.