Beyond Abney Park wall, and beyond the Library, the centre of the borough is in eruption. Much of old Newington has gone to make room for a new Town Hall. When that is finished, they say. North London will have nothing finer; but many people will regret the lost houses of Church-row, You must pass now betiveen the two churches. They face each other, one, the newer, with a fine, leaping spire; the other sunk in a grove of trees, with old headstones about it: a building, venerable and diminutive, keeping the site on which a church has stood since the time of the Saxons, Clissold Park will claim you soon, always supposing that you have no wish to linger in Church-walk, pallid promenade by a row of back gardens—one cargoed mysteriously with bottles, another with a few limp. potted palms.
Stoke Newington folk are proud of Clissold. They smile politely when you talk of Regents Park. Poor fellow, they think, how ingenuous he must be...
Certainly, Clissold is an amiable spot. It has an informal, lounge-suited manner. The New River wanders through it. The deer move lazily within their palisades. Children are always paddling in the pool, riding over the grass, or wondering in what part of the flower-beds their ball has lodged. Ana inevitably, somewhere behind, a parrot is reaming on a sustained top-note reminding you of that other gorgeous bird whose descendants may still be calling after poor Robin Crusoe in the Brazils.
You are not likely to forget Stoke Newington—or its park. Once you have seen this stay-at-home borough, so benign and shy, you may be tempted selfishly to keep its secret to yourself, Yet there is little need for caution Stoke Newington to-day is frankly unfashionable. "And a good job too!" Mr, Smeeth is heard to mutter as he settles down once more to his library book.
Mr. and Mrs, Arthur Warren Waite lived in the nine-story Colos-scum apartment house, at 116th Street and Riverside Drive, which in the New York of 1916 was a nifty.
Mrs, Mate, a bride of six months, was the only/ daughter of a wealthy drug manufacturer of Grand Rapids. Michigan. She was in her late twenties. Trousseaued to the mode, she was a striking-looking and, at times, a beautiful woman.
Dr. Waite was an exceptionally handsome man of 29. Tall, athletic end debonair, he had made a considerable dent in the life of the upper West Side since his arrival in New York six months before. He was an expert tennis player, and had already won several tournaments in and around Manhattan. Franklin P. Adams and other well known tennis addicts recall him as quite the best player on the neighbourhood courts.
He and Clara Louise Peck had met at school; but after graduation—since Father Peck's millions assured his daughter a top spot in local society, while Father Waite was a vegetable vendor—the young people saw little of each other. Clara Louise heard that Arthur was studying dentistry at the University of Michigan. Then she lost track of him, and so did Grand Rapids, until, after a five-year sojourn in South Africa, he returned to the old home town.
His first act was to deposit upward of $20,000 in one of the Grand Rapids banks—whereby he immediately became a person of standing and importance, As such, it was only natural that he should renew his schooltime friendship with Clara Louise Peck, and then lead her to the altar, The Pecks and Grand Rapids people generally were thrilled by the culmination of this sweetly old-fashioned romance.
Waite was, so far as any one could see, a model young man; he neither smoked nor drank. He was also a model husband; he spent his own money freely to maintain his heiress bride in the style to which she was accustomed. Finally, and crowning-ly, he showed himself the model son-in-law by urging that Clara's mother should come to visit them in New York.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.