The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-01-17

Blocked Broadway.
1t is easier for camel to go through the
eye of a needle or for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven than for a vehicle to pass
up and down Broadway without being blocked
What was formerly an acute distemper has be-
come, during the last fortnight, chronic
madness. Pedestrians share with passengers
the deadlock of travel, and every cart and
carriage, car and stage, in New York helps to
make actual EzekieIs vision of a wheel within
n wheel. Why don't some of our local artists
snatch at the theme and wrest inspiration
from the Broadway mud2 What room for
richness of color and antithesis Of character
What chance for painting an oath and
giving to slang the immortality of canvas
Why doesn't some new Watson or some fresh
William Allen Butler give us burlesque fol-
lowing up of Beautiful Snow or vigorous
reflection from "Nothing to Wear?" Every
stone between Trinity church and Chambers
street is as full of meditation as of mud
for any one who feels the fire of genius and
Ehe peat of prosody burning within him. Have
we no Leeches or Cruikshanks or Thack-
erays or Dickenses or Fargeons among us?
If 80, let them stand for ten minutes, at noon,
on the steps of the Aston House and study the
Bkein of horse kind and human kind inextrica-
bly, tangled, subjected to the unravelling fingers
OF the fdgety police Or, better still, let them
dash among the crazy hubs, the demented
spokes and the frantic felloes; let them seek
fgnominious protection, if they will, among
squad Of bedraggled women, escorted by the
police; let them endure the mental earthquake
and the emotional whirlwind involved in the
attempt to cross alone; let them remain calm
beneath the badinage of the stage driver and
the contempt of the bootblack; and then let
those acknowledge who will that this is the
best of all possible worlds and New York the
best Of all possible cities. Blocked Broadway
is Chinese puzzle. the problem of which is,
not how to put it together but how to take it
apart If the people were only as polite as the
horses we think the difficulty would be, in q
great measure, solved
Yesterdays genuine January thaw did not
diminish the horrors Of Broadway, though it
lessened the depth Of its nuisance by melting
it. If it was more fluid it was at the same
Gme more penetrating. He who could cross
the thoroughfare dry-shod might make light
of Israers adventure in the passage Of the
Red Sea. But while the thaw failed to carry into
the sewers all our sources of vexation it very
much assisted the archaeological researches of
Captain Thorne Italian street-cleaners. By
its aid they succeeded in exposing what ap-
I. of
way in several localities. The structure was
examined by judges Of great experience,
whose opinion decided it to be Hoboken
trap-block, or Belgian" deposit executed by
the Tammany dynasty in the era which pre-
ceded reform and the snow fall. Sanguine peo-
pie predict from the progress made in the ex-
cavation that within few months, say by the
Fourth of July at the furthest, it will be posi-
BILE to construct o comparative map Of the me-
tropolis which will give approximately most
of the street lines and locate the street rail-
roads as they existed before the holidays and
the glacial era. For the stupendous triumphs
of the policy Of mastery inactivity which
complish such welcome results it is popularity
voted that the streets as we see them to-day
ere the appropriate monument.
In addition to the Broadway discoveries, very
Late reports announce that double line Of
iron rails has been found in fair state of
preservation in Ann street. by force of
Romans acting under the orders Of dstin-
guished antiquarian. They are positively
assumed to be relics of the track of the
Blocker Street Railroad Company, which it is
historically proved once held the franchise Of
a right of way in that and neighboring streets,
and has not yet formally abandoned it Should
the thaw continue this corporation will, no
doubt, resume its communication with its
ancient terminus at Fulton Market.
The Public Schools-Further Results OF