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And the whole city—business quarters and industrial, rich quarters and poor—is in a state of chaotic upheaval, so furiously are they tearing down the New York that was new twenty years ago, and replacing it with a New York, in every quarter and every street significant of the presence of colossal wealth, of stupendous private fortunes, of an unprecedented and unbelievable number of great incomes.

Fifteen years ago the number of private equipages on New York’s streets was noticeably small, considering the city’s size and wealth, and their appointments for the most part extremely modest. To-day Fifth avenue and Central Park, from September to mid-June, are thronged with handsome private carriages, notably costly in all details of harness and upholstery, the servants in expensive, often gaudy liveries; and the multitude of women thus swept along in state, in beautiful dresses and hats and wraps, frequently display fortunes in furs and jewels.

As for the shops, it seems indeed only yesterday that you found the costly luxuries in a few fashionable places, and there in small quantities and almost reverently handled by clerks and customers. To-day the shops where the tens of thousands buy are more luxurious than were most of the best shops ten years ago. And in the best shops you are dazzled and overwhelmed by the careless torrent of luxury—enormous quantities, enormous prices, throngs of customers. Twenty-five dollars for a pair of shoes, fifteen dollars for a pair of stockings, two hundred dollars for a hat, one thousand dollars for a hat-pin or parasol, fifteen hundred for a small gold bottle for a woman’s dressing-table, thirty or forty thousand for a tiara, a hundred thousand for a string of pearls—these are prices which salesmen will give you with the air of one who tells an oft-told tale.