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listen to their sweet voices as they sung, and to learn, when admiring the ingenious liveliness of many of the infant school exercises, that the dear old lady by our side was the living, sprightly inventor of all that wit, fun, and instruction, and also of many of the more sacred lessons! How quickening to the heart's throb to see a crowd of babes flock around her knees, each wishing to be noticed and caressed!

On the exhibition day, when they were brought into the city that the public might see all the children, consisting of from babes of two years old up to boys and girls of fifteen, we stayed to congratulate the dear First Directress on the appearance made by her blooming family. But it was not easy to approach her she was encircled by a band of goodlooking young men, well dressed and of pleasing ex-pression. "Who are all these, dear lady, who surround you so that one cannot reach your hand ?” "Oh, these are a few of my own boys, who expect to see me here once a year. I am glad to see their faces, and to know that they are prospering." “I should think that they had grown out of your knowledge." "No-no-I know all that keep up the acquaintance. Here is one-a troublesome little fellow he was. He always thought when I went to mind my business that I had nothing to do but nurse him. I used to push him away. He was two years old.” "And so you did nurse me," said the grateful man; "but I was younger than

that, I was not a year and a half when you took me up."

One's sympathies flowed out with theirs, when the respected son of the venerated lady* made his way to her and embraced her, as they looked on each other with moistened eyes. It was a sight to make the heart sing.

*The Rev. Dr Bethune of Brooklyn.

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CHAPTER XXII.

THE ISLANDS.

It is a curious and rather painful sight, to watch the emptying of a newly-arrived cargo of emigrants on the unknown shore. Squalid, thinly clad, and far from clean, you instantly distinguish the bony Irishman, with his wife, and all the children, dragging an ill-packed bundle tied with a bit of rope, which is made long enough by the help of a strip of ticking, or a list border. They slide their bundle their all of worldly wealth-down a plank, and having drawn it aside on the dock, they hang helplessly around it, the children tumbling on it, till the ship has disgorged her motley company, and all are ready to appear at the Emigrant Office. Next you will see a pair of stout, thickly-clothed Germans, letting down their heavy chest, well nailed and corded, with a parcel of bedding on the top. And again, a rosy, round-cheeked Englishman, with his deal box, painted red. Each pours forth with a load to carry or care for, like the busy population on an ant-hill, and group after group sit on or watch by their

slender store. What will become of them all? Are any of them sick? Will they all find employment? Why, they will cumber the country. It will lose its American identity. How can that be preserved with such a mixed multitude flowing into it? Spare your solicitude, good stranger. Do you observe the thick, whitened waters of the Father of Rivers as they mingle with the sea? They discolour it for a little space-presently it becomes but a slight tinge, and long before the waves that meet the Mississippi have flowed back to the Reefs of Florida, the mud is deposited in the bottom of the Gulf, and the waters of the river are amalgamated with the waters of the ocean.

Nothing convinces one more of the force and mass of the American character, than to see that the immense influx of foreigners has no power to modify it. The new-comers become modified speedily, chiefly through the political institutions. Many a mind, indolent before, perceives that it has something to do and something to obtain here, and so is roused to untried activity. Many, alas! have been roused to indignation by the treachery of selfish wretches who have boarded their vessel, promised all kinds of assistance, and sold to them so-called railway tickets to Buffalo; and when at Albany the poor ignorant strangers have presented them, they have found that they were tickets for canal-boats on which they must linger for very many days, providing food out of their slender funds! Such base

dealings not only rouse indignation, but teach the half-passive that they must be active, or they cannot get along amidst a set of sharpers. I am happy to know that such baseness to the stranger and the poor is now put a stop to, and that the instructions obtained at the Emigrant Office-I believe there are two-act both as guide and protector to these unfortunates.

Hardship they must and do encounter— they are accustomed to that; but their hopes were high that freedom and justice were bound together on the shores of the new world. To be met on their very first business transaction by an act of roguery, is confounding and discouraging in a high degree— the more so that, in general, it has been fellowcountrymen, feigning sympathy and acts of kindness, who have dealt the blow.

Of the multitude who come annually from Europe to try a new home, many bring education and property enough to have a plan and follow it in their future settlement. But many suffer from as great poverty of knowledge as of property, while some are also poor in health. The East River is beautifully speckled over with islands which the wisdom of the legislature has chosen as the receptacles of various sets of people requiring guardianship and superintendence; while its taste has caused buildings to be raised for all their purposes, which adorn the scene-already a very gem of beauties.

On WARD'S ISLAND is the great depôt where healthy emigrants are sent to wait till they can be

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