"Look there!" whispered Arthur to Barnhurst, "she was as happy once as Alice, and as pure,—that is, as happy and as pure as Alice before you knew her. What is she now?"
Barnhurst did not reply.
Arthur took a silver dollar from his pocket and gave it to the girl. "Go home," he said, "and God pity you!"
"Home!" she echoed, and took the dollar with an incredulous look, and then uttering a strange mad laugh, she went to spend the dollar,—one-half of it for rum and the other half to pay the rent which she owed to Trinity Church.
(Here it occurs to us, to propose three cheers to good old Trinity Church,—and three more to the Patent Gospel which influences the actions of its venerable corporation. Hip—hip—hurrah! Hur—, but somehow the cheering dies away, when one thinks for a minute of the vast contrast between the Gospel of Trinity Church and the Gospel of the New Testament. I somehow think we won't cheer any more.)
Up Broadway they resumed their march, Herman and Arthur, arm in arm, and silent as the grave. To see them walk so lovingly together, you would have thought them the best friends in the world.
What's yonder light, flashing from the window of the fourth story? The light of a gambling hell, my friend. That light shines upon piles of gold and upon faces haggard with the tortures of the damned.
And these half naked forms, crouching in the doorway of yonder unfinished edifice,—huddling together in their rags, and vainly endeavoring to keep out the winter's cold. Children,—friendless, orphaned children. All day long they roam the streets in search of bread, and at night they sleep together in this luxurious style.
But we have arrived at the Astor and the Park stretches before us, the wind moaning among its leafless trees, and its lights glimmering in a sort of mournful radiance through the gloom. The Park, whose walks by day and night have been the theater of more tragedies of real life,—more harrowing agony, hopeless misery, starving despair,—than you could chronicle in the compass of a thousand volumes. Could these flag-stones speak, how many histories might they tell—histories of those, who, mad with the last anguish of despair, have paced these walks at dead of night, hesitating between crime and suicide, between the knife of the assassin and the last plunge of the self murderer!
But at this moment shouts of drunken mirth are heard, opposite the Astor. Some twenty gay young gentlemen, attired in opera uniform,—black dress-coat, white vest, white kid gloves,—and fragrant at once of champagne and cologne, have formed a circle around the ancient pump, which stands near the Park gate. These gay young gentlemen, after two hours painful endurance of that refinement of torture, known as the Italian Opera, have been making a tour of philosophical observation through the town; they have carried on a brisk crusade against the watchmen; have drank much champagne at a "crack" hotel; have tarried awhile in the aristocratic resort of Mr. Peter Williams, which, as you doubtless know, gives tone and character to the classic region of the Five Points; and now encircling the pump, they listen to the eloquent remarks of one of their number, who is interrupted now and then by rounds of enthusiastic applause. Very much inebriated, he is seated astride of the pump, which his vivid imagination transforms into a blooded racer—