salary of $50,000 a year. All the business details are attended to entirely by this agent and his force of subordinates. Of these annual rents a part is distributed among the various members of the Astor family according to the degree of their interest; the remainder is used to buy more land.
The Astor mansions rank among the most pretentious in the United States and in Europe. The New York City residence long occupied by Mrs. William Astor at Fifth avenue and Sixty-fifth street is one of extraordinary luxury and grandeur. Adjoining and connected with it is the equally sumptuous mansion of John Jacob Astor. In these residences, or rather palaces, splendor is piled upon splendor. In Mrs. William Astor's spacious ball-room and picture gallery, balls have been given, each costing, it is said, $100,000. In cream and gold the picture gallery spreads; the walls are profuse with costly paintings, and at one end is a gallery in wrought iron where musicians give out melody on festive occasions. The dining rooms of these houses are of an immensity. Embellished in old oak incrusted with gold, their walls are covered with antique tapestries set in huge oak framework with margins thick with gold. Upon the diners a luxurious ceiling looks down, a blaze of color upon black oak set off by masses of gold borders. Directly above the center of the table are painted garlands of flowers and clusters of fruit. In the hub of this representation is Mrs. Astor's monogram in letters of gold. From the massive hall, with its reproductions of paintings of Marie Antoinette and other old French court characters, its statuary, costly vases and draperies, a wide marble stairway curves gracefully upstairs. To dwell upon all of the luxurious aspects of these residences would compel an extended series of details. In both of the residences every room is a thing of magnificence.
PROXIMITY OF PALACES AND POVERTY.
From these palaces it is but a step, as it were, to gaunt neighborhoods where great parts of the population are crowded in the most inhuman