I like it because it
sprawls low against the ground instead of clawing up into the sky.
Manhattan is solid with brick and steel from river to river. Brooklyn
ambles on peacefully till it comes to a region of sand lots or a marsh
or a creek, and stops. Half a mile further on it resumes its gentle
dreams of progress and wanders north, or south, or east, as the fancy
seizes it. It runs into blind corners, it debouches upon ravines and
woodland strips, it hears the echoes of ocean on the beaches. It is
leisure; it is peace; it is Brooklyn.
At the same time it is well to remember that Brooklyn is something more
than a geographical fact. Brooklyn describes a scheme of life and a
condition of the mind. The life there is like a page from yesterday.
People who live in Brooklyn organise reading circles. They attend
lectures on the Wagnerian music drama. They have retained progressive
euchre and the strawberry festival as essential ingredients of religion.
They are extremely fond of going on long excursions into the country in
early spring. They make it a habit to walk across the bridge on their
way home in the evening, and they speak with great feeling of the
beautiful effect when New York's high buildings flash into banked masses
of flame in the falling dusk.
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