Page:When the movies were young - Arvidson - 1925.djvu/21

 while the elders played whist. Bounteous supper—champagne, perhaps gin and tansy.

But keenly attuned ears, when they paused to listen, could already hear off in the distance the first faint roll of the drums in the march of progress. "Little Old New York" was growing up and getting to be a big city. And so the Knickerbockers and other aristocracy must leave their brownstone dwellings for quieter districts further uptown. Business was slowly encroaching on their life's peaceful way.

Another day and another generation. Gone the green lawns, enclosed by iron fences where modest cows and showy peacocks mingled, friendly. Gone the harpsichord, the candle, the lamp, to give way to the piano and the gas-lamp. Close up against each other the buildings now nestle round Union Square and on into Fourteenth Street. The horse-drawn street car rattles back and forth where No. 11 stands with some remaining dignity of the old days. On the large glass window—for No. 11's original charming exterior has already yielded to the changes necessitated by trade—is to be read "Steck Piano Company."

In the lovely old ballroom where valiant gentlemen and languishing ladies once danced to soft and lilting strains of music, under the candles' glow, and where "The Last Leaf" entertained his stalwart cronies with cock fighting, the Steck Piano Company now gives concerts and recitals.

The old house has "tenants." And as tenants come and go, the Steck Piano Company tarries but a while, and then moves on.

A lease for the piano company's quarters in No. 11 is drawn up for another firm for $5,000 per year. In place