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But it is of New York-the "Empire City," where traffic hastens and where shipping throngs, where wealth enjoys and poverty labours, where want is pursued by benevolence, inebriety by temperance, and vice of all sorts by Christianity-it is of this, emporium of the country that we wish to speak.

It is common to say, "New York will be a handsome city when it is finished;" and so it will, if that day of repose ever reaches it. One sometimes lights on a street quiet and clean, where you can stand still and enjoy it. But, lo! a restless genius has bought a house. However comfortable it is, he will hardly believe it is his own till he has altered it. So you will see it climbing a story nearer the clouds, a conservatory bulging out on the side, a portico on the front. If it be a store, a smarter window or a deeper cellar is wanted. In short, your orderly street is quickly cumbered with all the confusion of building; and timber, bricks, and lime are spread about with little ceremony, and much incumbrance to passengers. There is wonderful forbearance on the part of the citizens with the encroachments made on the footpaths by boxes and casks of all kinds. You must glide through them very warily, lest your clothes be rent on a corner or your foot wounded by a nail; not to mention tinctures of tar or sugary matter, which may be more easily contracted than shunned in the lower and more business parts of the city. It must be on the give-and-take principle that these incumbrances are suffered

"I won't complain of you to-day, for I expect my cargo in to-morrow; we must all get along❞—and so they do, more at the occupiers' ease in some streets than that of the passengers. It reminded me of an indignant traveller whose horse had shied at the carcase of a dead brother at the end of a small town in Scotland-" Why is not this nuisance removed?" 66 Hout, our horses are used to it, they never scare." "But mine does; and if you don't have it removed, I will represent it to the Bailie.” "Hout awa', sir-I'm Bailie mysel'!" Probably these cumberers of the pavement are bailies too.

Another subject on which great forbearance is shewn, is the endurance of noise in many operations, where a little care would lessen or entirely remove it. The movable sides of their long carts rattle. The loads they carry rattle. By half-past four A.M., the milk-carts begin their clattering progress. Many of them carry six tin jars, which contain perhaps fifteen gallons apiece. These jars are slipt into six iron rings, which might be easily lined with leather, but they are not. At every motion of the cart all the six give forth their own portion of noise. Add to this the usual quantity of rattle of the wheels on the axle; the shout, or whistle, or frightful Australian "Coooa" with which the milkmen summon the drowsy damsels to come forth with their empty pitchers, and you have got up a nuisance which it would require a determined anti-clatter company to put down. Woe be to the sick and wakeful who have

just dropped into a slumber!—it is effectually over for this morning.

Next comes the ice cart, with less commotion; its driver rings, and in his huge forceps lifts a cube of transparent solid ice; not the "rotten ice," frozen and melted, and frozen again, that we call ice in England; but the pure block cut out of the Rockland Lake, which might have been several feet thick, and frozen a couple of months, before it was broken by the dealer in that frigid but important and wholesome luxury.

On the Sabbath mornings another noise is added, which inflicts, not headache alone, but heartache. By six o'clock the news-boys traverse the streets, shouting, "The Herald, the New Yorker," &c., furnishing half a day's secular reading for all who are so disposed. These boys! lately tattered, and wan, and timid Irish emigrants; look at them fitted out in second-hand garments, the fitting of which is not so much to be considered, as how they, destitute, earned the cash to purchase them. See them wrestling, scrambling, teazing each other in their breathing intervals. Hear their slang wit, impudence, and profanity mingled. Observe their acute calculating skill. One wants to be off home, and will "sell out" to the next, giving him the advantage of a paper or two of his "stock in trade" into the bargain. Bright fellows! what ready mother wit! what sharp adoption of trading phrases! How capable of learning something better! Poor waifs,

cast on the world's unholy shore! I never saw any of them without sorrow, excepting a little party of them who had been induced to join a "boys' meeting," where their sharpened faculties seemed to enable them to apprehend meaning more easily, and more to enjoy intellectual occupation than some of their peers.

The stores are very handsome, and the reckless way in which masses of valuable goods are exposed to the sun inside, and to the dust outside, very surprising. Several of the stores occupy a whole block of buildings—a space large enough for five or six moderately sized houses. On some of these one's eye rests with peculiar complacency as the fruit of industry united with integrity. You may be told as you pass along-" Look at that fine store. Its owner came here in debt-he and his family allowed themselves no indulgences, but all worked hard, till he was able to return to Scotland, assemble his creditors, and pay up principal and interest. Since then they have never looked behind them-all has gone well." I worshipped repeatedly in the church with such a family, and used to turn and see them step out of their carriages with as loyal a heart to them as I have felt to our own beloved Queen, when I stayed to see her step out of hers.

Perhaps the very purest pleasure of all the delights afforded me in that whole city, was meeting with some of my countrymen, now thriving, cheerful, hospitable, loving—who but a few years before

were care-worn beings, who having strained every fibre to raise money to carry them, had crossed the ocean with much trembling. To mingle sympathies in their thankfulness, as had often been done in their cares and sorrows at home, seemed to me a treat that angels might relish. To be fanned in their rocking-chairs, refreshed by their fruits and iced water, to inquire all their histories, to play with their children, to go with them to church, and see how like old Scotland it was," yea, even to mingle tears with them at Greenwood Cemetery, over their honoured and departed dead, was a treat worth the trouble of a voyage across the Atlantic. But the citizens have made me forget the city.

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Broadway is a perfect puzzle-how smaller and lighter crafts make undemolished way through that throng of omnibuses, is amazing. Many a street in London is as much crowded, but I do not suppose in any one, if you except the vicinity of the Crystal Palace at evening, you could count twenty omnibuses at a time within sight. Yet there is no pressing and driving-but cheerful, smiling courtesy, on all hands. We had occasion to cross from Jersey City on Christmas eve, when the roomy steamer could scarcely afford standing room for the welldressed throngs of artisans and their families who were crossing to be ready for to-morrow's holiday. How pleased they looked! How obliging! Giving way when they could, or expressing regret to one another if they could not. Not one tipsy shout

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