First Sentence

"Some two or three years before our revolutionary war, just at the close of day, two girls were seen entering Broadway through a wicket garden-gate, in the rear of a stately mansion which fronted on Broad-street, that being then the court-end of the city-the residence of unquestioned aristocracy- (sic transit gloria mundi!) whence royal favour and European fashions were diffused through the province of New-York."