Ellis Parker Butler

“ New York, although afloat, was still New York. Automobiles were whirring up and down the Avenue, and I knew that in the down-town districts the heavy trucks, and the street cars, and the elevated trains were moving the same as usual. In Wall Street the brokers and bankers were even then gathering as usual for their day of business, and, in fact, the whole life of the city was going on the same as usual. Unless Mr. Markright chose to sit on the edge of the city and let his feet hang over, I could not see how he could obtain the sensations of a yachtsman from the voyage the city was to make. ”

“ A man cannot be expected to remember everything, I hope. At any rate, John D. Markright had no cause to blame me, as he did. I did not put Staten Island where it happens to lie—some one else put it there. It was there long before I was born, for that matter, and the captains and pilots I had hired to attend to the navigation of the city should have thought of it. But they did not. They steamed their tugs straight for the Narrows, and steamed into them, and of course, when the city tried to follow through, it was too wide. ”

“ From the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil my men were at work with chisel and pick-axe, with crow-bar and auger, removing the streets of New York! Have you ever, in the old days, seen the force of men removing the snow from the streets of the metropolis? It was thus I worked removing the streets themselves. First the main thoroughfares—Broadway, Fifth Avenue and the shopping streets—then the less important streets and avenues. Miles of asphalt my workmen rolled up as a man rolls a strip of carpet and dumped into the bay. ”

“ The old man will fool them yet. I will stay in New York, and I will go to the Mediterranean. I will stay in New York and you will take New York to the Mediterranean."
As the immensity of the idea dawned on me I gasped, and well I might, for never had John D. Markright conceived such a plan before. Nothing but the threats of death and of pause in gain could have forced that abnormal shopkeeping mind to such heights of imagination. ”

“ In summer the streets of the East Side are merry with the voices of the numerous children splashing about in life-preservers, while their mothers sit sewing in their skiffs, or bargain with the peddlers who steer their well-laden push-rafts from place to place, avoiding the vigilant eyes of the police tugs. ”

“ To this effect I had engaged the entire fleet of river and harbor tug-boats that had added so much to the life of the waters about New York, and they were prepared to attach themselves to the enormous float whenever I should command them to do so, and I now gave the command. Never, I am sure, did such a team of tugs take in tow such a vessel. Great as was the weight of the float and its contents, the strength of the little tugs was more than sufficient to move it easily through the water, for the little tugs are boats of enormous power. ”

“ This whole idea of moving New York was folly. It is not the climate he needs, it is the greater quiet. My own advice was that he should go to Venice; it was his idea that the Mediterranean was what he needed. There are no noisy streets in Venice——"
I did not wait to hear more. The next morning when John D. Markright awoke—if his feverish tossings on his bed could be called sleep—it was a new city that met his gaze. In such a cause I do not spare myself. I did not begrudge John D. Markright the labor of that night. ”

“ Even the wash-woman, carrying home some one's week's laundry in her little canoe, has a word of thanks for me, while the visitors to the city who see its beauties from the decks of the excursion steamers are informed by the man with the megaphone that all this peace and beauty are due to my efforts. ”

“ It will tie up some ready money. But I have faith in New York real estate. I'll buy it all."
"Very well," I said severely. "See that you do. And another thing—I will not move the island an inch until you get permission from Congress and the State Assembly. I have an idea that this nation does not favor secession. I don't know how it would like the idea of having its leading city floated off to the Mediterranean, and tagged onto France or Morocco, or wherever you want it. I want to do the fair thing by the nation in which I was born." ”

“ Senile dyspeptic or not, John D. Markright was still the richest man in the world, and the proposition was one that appealed to my boyish imagination.
"These doctors," he whined, "these doctors say I must get out of this climate, or die. They won't have it any other way—die or get out! Go to the Mediterranean, or die, they say. They all say it. And how can I leave New York? I can't! I can't!"
THE FLATIRON BUILDING IN 1913
As you sail gently up Broadway or fish for tommy-cods off the Flatiron Building ”