The Bow of Orange Ribbon

It was one of those beautiful, lengthening days, when May was pressing back with both hands the shades of the morning and the evening; May in New York one hundred and twenty-one years ago, and yet the May of A.D. 1886,--the same clear air and wind, the same rarefied freshness, full of faint, passing aromas from the wet earth and the salt sea and the blossoming gardens. For on the shore of the East River the gardens still sloped down, even to below Peck Slip; and behind old Trinity the apple-trees blossomed like bridal nosegays, the pear-trees rose in immaculate pyramids, and here and there...