[Illustration: A Dog Fight at Kit Burn's]
THE DOG FIGHTS.
Kit Burns is very proud of his dogs, and his cellar contains a collection of the fiercest and most frightfully hideous animals to be found in America. They are very docile with their owner, and seem really fond of him. They are well fed and carefully tended, for they are a source of great profit to their owner.
Notice is given that at such a time there will be a dog fight at "Sportsman's Hall," and when that time arrives the roughs and bullies of the neighborhood crowd the benches of the amphitheatre. A more brutal, villainous-looking set it would be hard to find. They are more inhuman in appearance than the dogs.
Two huge bull-dogs, whose keepers can hardly restrain them, are placed in the pit, and the keeper or backer of each dog crouches in his place, one on the right hand, the other on the left, and the dogs in the middle. At a given signal, the animals are released, and the next moment the combat begins. It is simply sickening. Most of our readers have witnessed a dog fight in the streets. Let them imagine the animals surrounded by a crowd of brutal wretches whose conduct stamps them as beneath the struggling beasts, and they will have a fair idea of the scene at Kit Burns's.
THE REVIVAL AT KIT BURN'S.
During the summer of 1868, while the Water street revival was going on at John Allen's, the parties conducting the movement endeavored to induce Kit Burns to join them. He refused all their offers, and at last they hired his rat pit at a high price, for the purpose of using it for religious services for one hour in each day. This was done, and the meetings held therein were sadly disgraceful to the cause of Christianity. We take the following account of one of these meetings from the New York World, our apology for intruding it, being our desire to present a truthful picture.
The Water street prayer-meetings are still continued. Yesterday at noon a large crowd assembled in Kit Burns's liquor shop, very few of whom were roughs. The majority seemed to be business men and clerks, who stopped in to see what was going on, in a casual manner. In a few minutes after twelve o'clock the pit was filled up very comfortably, and Mr. Van Meter made his appearance and took up a position here he could address the crowd from the centre of the pit, inside the barriers. The roughs and dry goods clerks piled themselves up as high as the roof, tier after tier, and a sickening odor came from the dogs and debris of rats' bones under the seats.
Kit stood outside, cursing and damning the eyes of the missionaries for not hurrying up.
Kit said, 'I'm d——d if some of the people that come here oughtn't to be clubbed. A fellow 'u'd think that they had niver seen a dog-pit afore. I must be d——d good-looking to have so many fellows looking at me.'