From the chocolate-factories or the railroad-shops,
which are the chief industries of York, they would be crossing
the bridge of the Ouse, the famous stream on which the Romans had
their town, and which suggested to the Anglicans to call their
Eboracum Eurewic--a town on a river. In due time the Danes
modified this name to Yerik, and so we came honestly by the name
of our own New York, called after the old York, as soon as the
English had robbed the Dutch of it, and the King of England had
given the province to his brother the Duke of York. Both cities
are still towns on rivers, but the Ouse is no more an image or
forecast of the Hudson than Old York is of New York. For that
reason, the bridge over it is not to be compared to our Brooklyn
Bridge, or even to any bridge which is yet to span the Hudson.
The difference is so greatly in our favor that we may well yield
our city's mother the primacy in her city wall. We have ourselves
as yet no Plantagenet wall, and we have not yet got a mediaeval
gate through which the traveller passes in returning from the
Flatiron Building to his hotel in the Grand Central Station.
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