On Sunday morning New York puts on its holiday dress. The stores are closed, the streets have a deserted aspect, for the crowds of vehicles, animals and human beings that fill them on other days are absent. There are no signs of trade anywhere except in the Bowery and Chatham street. The city has an appearance of cleanliness and quietness pleasant to behold. The wharves are hushed and still, and the river and bay lie calm and bright in the light of the Sabbath sun. One misses the stages from Broadway, and a stranger at once credits the coachmen with a greater regard for the day than their brothers of the street cars. The fact is, however, that Jehu of the stagecoach rests on the Sabbath because his business would be unprofitable on that day. The people who patronize him in the week have no use for him on Sunday. The horse-cars make their trips as in the week. They are a necessity in so large a city. The distances one is compelled to pass over here, even on Sunday, are too great to be traversed on foot.

Towards ten o’clock the streets begin to fill up with churchgoers. The cars are crowded, and handsome carriages dash by conveying their owners to their places of worship. The uptown churches are the most fashionable, and are the best attended, but all the sacred edifices are well filled on Sunday morning. New York compromises with its conscience by a scrupulous attendance upon morning worship, and reserves the rest of the day for its own convenience. The up-town churches all strive to get in, or as near as possible to, the Fifth avenue. One reason for this is, doubtless, the desire that all well-to-do New Yorkers have to participate in the after-church promenade. The churches close their services near about the same hour, and then each pours its throng of fashionably dressed people into the avenue. The congregations of distant churches all find their way to the avenue, and for about an hour after church the splendid street presents a very attractive spectacle. The toilettes of the ladies show well here, and it is a pleasant place to meet one’s acquaintances.

The majority of New Yorkers dine at one o’clock on Sunday, the object being to allow the servants the afternoon for themselves. After dinner your New Yorker, male or female, thinks of enjoyment. If the weather is fair the fashionables promenade the Fifth and Madison avenues, or drive in the park. The working classes fill the street-cars, and throng the Central Park. In the summer whole families of laboring people go to the park early in the morning, taking a lunch with them, and there spend the entire day. In the skating season the lakes are thronged with skaters. The church bells ring out mournfully towards three o’clock, but few persons answer the call. The afternoon congregations are wofully thin.

In the mild season, the adjacent rivers and the harbor are thronged with pleasure boats filled with excursionists, and the various horse and steam railway lines leading from the city to the sea-shore are well patronized.

Broadway wears a silent and deserted aspect all day long, but towards sunset the Bowery brightens up wonderfully, and after nightfall the street is ablaze with a thousand gaslights. The low class theatres and places of amusement in that thoroughfare are opened towards dark, and then vice reigns triumphant in the Bowery. The Bowery beer-gardens do a good business. The most of them are provided with orchestras or huge orchestrions, and these play music from the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

Until very recently the bar-rooms were closed from midnight on Saturday until midnight on Sunday, and during that period the sale of intoxicating liquors was prohibited. Now all this is changed. The bar-rooms do a good business on Sunday, and especially on Sunday night. The Monday morning papers tell a fearful tale of crimes committed on the holy day. Assaults, fights, murders, robberies, and minor offences are reported in considerable numbers. Drunkenness is very common, and the Monday Police Courts have plenty of work to do.

At night the churches are better attended than in the afternoon, but not as well as in the morning.

Sunday concerts, given at first-class places of amusement, are now quite common. The music consists of masses, and other sacred airs, varied with selections from popular operas. The performers are famous throughout the country for their musical skill, and the audiences are large and fashionable. No one seems to think it sinful thus to desecrate the Lord’s Day; and it must be confessed that these concerts are the least objectionable Sunday amusements known to our people.

It must not be supposed that the dissipation of which we have spoken is confined exclusively to the rougher class. Old and young men of respectable position participate in it as well. Some are never called on to answer for it, others get into trouble with the police authorities. One reason for this dissipation is plain. People are so much engrossed in the pursuit of wealth that they really have no leisure time in the week. They must take Sunday for relaxation and recreation, and they grudge the few hours in the morning that decency requires them to pass in church.