CITY SCENES AND CITY LIFE.
NUMBER ONE.

“Each to his taste,” somebody says: so say I: so says Gotham. Look at that splendid house, with its massive door-way, its mammoth plate-glass windows, its tasteful conservatory, where the snowy Orange-blossom, and clustering Rose, and crimson Cactus, and regal Passion-flower, and fragrant Heliotrope breathe out their little day of sweetness. See that Gothic stable, with its faultless span of horses, and liveried coachman, and anti-republican carriage, whose coat of arms makes our National Eagle droop his fearless pinions. Then cast your eye on that tumble-down wooden grocery adjoining, sending up its reeking fumes of rum, onions, and salt fish, into patrician nostrils! Go where you will in New York, you see the same strong contrasts. Feast your eyes on beauty, and a skeleton startles you at its side. Lazarus sitteth ever at the Gate of Dives.

Here is a primary school: what a host of little ragged urchins are crowding in! Suppose I step in quietly among them. Now, they take their places in seats terraced off one above another, so that each little face is distinctly visible. What a pretty sight! and how Nature loves to compensate! sending beauty to the hovel, deformity to the hall. There’s a boy, now, in that ragged jacket, who is a study for an artist. See his broad, ample forehead; mark how his dark eyes glow: and that little girl at his side, whose chestnut curls droop so gracefully over her soft-fringed eyes and dimpled shoulders. And that dream-child in yonder corner, with blue-veined transparent temples, whose spiritual eyes even now can see that fadeless shore to which bright angels beckon him. Deal gently with him—he is passing away!

Here comes the teacher, brisk, angular, and sharp-voiced. Heaven pity the children! She’s a human icicle—pasteboard-y and proper! I already experience a mental shiver. Now she comes up and says (apologetically to my new satin cloak), “You see, madam, these are only poor children.” The toadying creature! Lucky for her that I’m not “a committee.” Can’t her dull eyes recognise God’s image in lindsey-woolsey? Can she see no genius written on yonder broad forehead? No poetry slumbering in yonder sweet eyes? Did Franklin, Clay, and Webster study their alphabet in silk and velvet? Now she hands me a book in which visitors’ names are inscribed, and requests me to write mine. Certainly. “Mrs. John Smith there it is. Hope she likes it as well as I do.

Speaking of names, I read on a sign yesterday that “Richard Haas:” to-day I saw, down street, that “John Haas.” I’m sure I’m glad of it. I congratulate both those enterprising gentlemen. There goes a baker’s cart, with “Ernest Flog-er” painted on the side. It is my impression that if you do it, Ernest, “your cake will be dough;” 1854 being considered the millennium of “strong-minded women.” Here we are, almost to the Battery. “Fanfernot & Dulac:” that must be a chain-lightening firm. Wonder if “Fanfernot” is the silent partner?

Here’s a man distributing tracts. Now, if he hands me one, I’ll throw it down. See how meekly he picks it up, and hands me another. “That’s right, friend Colporteur. I only wanted to see if you were in earnest: glad to see you so well employed.”

“Yes Ma’am,” he says, much relieved; “sinners here in New York need waking up”—which sentiment I endorse, and advise him to call at the N. Y. Tribune office.

Down comes the rain: had I taken my umbrella not a drop would have fallen. “I ’spect” I was born on a Friday; but as that can’t be helped now, I’ll step into that book-store till the shower is over. The owner politely gives me a chair, and then hands me, for my edification, the last fashion-prints! F-a-n-n-y F-e-r-n! can it be possible that you look so frivolous? Tracts and fashion-prints, both offered you in one forenoon: Wonder if there’s a second-hand drab Quaker bonnet anywhere that will subdue your “style?”

See that little minstrel in front of the store, staggering under the weight of a hand-organ. What a crowd of little beggar-boys surround him, petitioning “for just one tune.” Now, I wonder if the rough school that boy has been in, has hardened his heart? Has he grown prematurely worldly-wise and selfish? Will he turn, gruffly away from that penniless, Tom Thumb audience, or will he give them a gratuitous tune? God be thanked, his childish heart yet beats warm and true under that tattered jacket. He smiles sweetly on the eager group, and strikes up “Lang Syne.” Other than mortal ears are listening! That deed, unnoticed by the hurrying Broadway throng, is noted by the Recording Angel. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.”

Sunshine again! dripping awnings and sloppy pavements. There’s a man preaching an out-door temperance sermon: what a bungling piece of work he makes of it! If he would lend me that pro tem barrel-pulpit, I’d astonish him, and take the feather out of “Miss Lucy Stone’s” bonnet.