Huneker's "The New
Cosmopolis":
"The region of Bohemia, Mr. James Huneker found long ago, is within us.
At twenty, he says, he discovered that there is no such enchanted spot
as the Latin Quarter, but that every generation sets back the mythical
land into the golden age of the Commune, or of 1848, or the days of
'Hernani.' It is the same with New York's East Side, 'the fabulous East
Side,' as Mr. Huneker calls it in his collection of international urban
studies, 'The New Cosmopolis.' If one judged externals by grime, by
poverty, by sanded back-rooms, with long-haired visionaries assailing
the social order, then the East Side of the early eighties has gone down
before the mad rush of settlement workers, impertinent reformers,
sociological cranks, self-advertising politicians, billionaire
socialists, and the reporters. To-day the sentimental traveller 'feels a
heart-pang to see the order, the cleanliness, the wide streets, the
playgrounds, the big boulevards, the absence of indigence that have
spoiled the most interesting part of New York City.
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