Once, walking there on a bright sunny day, I met four pall-bearers, slowly bearing a coffin covered with black, with the clergyman in his gown and bands, and the mourners following. Instinctively the gay crowd parted upon the sidewalk, the men standing with uncovered heads; the laugh died upon the lips of the young girl; the little children looked on, wondering and awe-struck. Even she over whose own grave no loving tear might ever fall, bowed her defiant head, and for one brief moment faced that terrible thought. And so the slow procession passed, though no one knew who slept so quietly amid all that din and noise; but knowing only that some heart, some home was desolate. Then the eager crowd closed in again, and new faces passed smilingly, new forms stepped gayly, smart equipages dashed by, and the jest and the laugh fell again upon my ear as before, while I seemed to move as one in a dream.

Once again, but in the country, fragrant with blossoms, and sweet with the song of birds and the murmured whisper of leaves, just such a sombre procession crossed the green fields, under the blue sky, with its quiet burden. It is long years since I witnessed both; but they stand out in my memory, each as distinctly as if it were but yesterday. I don't know which was the more impressive. I only know that when I looked upon the latter, I said to myself, when life's fret is over, just so would I be carried to my last rest.

One of the prettiest sights to be seen in the early morning is that of the little girls going to school. I like them best of a rainy day, because then their sweet little faces beam from out little close hoods, drawn about their red cheeks; and their little fat calves have such a tussle with the wind as they try to get round gusty corners; so that what with battling with their sandwich-boxes, and what with their geographies, their gleaming white teeth make a very lovely show between their rosy lips. What policeman, with the heart of a father, but would rather help a flock of these pretty birds across the street than a bevy of paniered ladies who shrink from their touch, all the while they are ready to scream with fright if they are not taken by the arm.

Commend me to the little girls of six, eight, and twelve, who, not yet having come to their wickedness, squeal out with delicious frankness, "Mr. Policeman! Mr. Policeman! please come carry me over the street." And so they swarm round him like a cloud of bees till they are all safely landed on the other side.

Bless their little innocent faces! It is as good as a chapter of the Bible to any policeman, to see such sweet white lilies blossoming amid the physical and moral filth which they meet in their rounds in the New York streets.

As it is rather an exception to find a little school-boy who is not either a little saintly prig or a little well-dressed ruffian and bully, I have not contemplated their goings and comings with the same satisfaction as I do that of their little sisters; though why a little boy shouldn't be as well-mannered as a little girl I have always been at a loss to know.

One is occasionally an eye-witness to scenes in New York which momentarily paralyze one's faith in humanity, I had almost said in God. One lovely afternoon of last week I determined to try the drive by the "new Hudson River road to Fort Lee," which, by the way, I rapturously commend, en passant, to every New Yorker, and stranger within our gates who is fond of beautiful scenery. On the way we alighted, and entered one of the numerous rural gardens, to enjoy from thence a fine view of the river. Immediately our attention was arrested by loud voices; among which we distinguished that of a woman, now in loud, angry tones, then soft and pleading, as if deprecating personal violence. "Pay up, then," vociferated a coarse, masculine voice, as a stout man appeared, grasping a young girl of eighteen or twenty by the wrist, dressed in a soiled tawdry bonnet and silk gown, and forcibly ejected her from the piazza of a refreshment room into the garden. She was a woman and young, and without understanding her offence, his brutality roused me; but my blood froze in my veins, when gathering up her form to its full height, raising her small hand in the air, and flashing her dark eyes, she cursed him as only a woman can curse who is lost for this world and the next. And men stood by and heard it, who had mothers and sisters, and laughed, and jeered, and maddened her already excited blood, for sport, to fiercer words of unwomanly strife! A young man of her own age, who appeared to have accompanied her there, and seemed terrified at the turn of affairs, stepped to her side; but she sprang upon him like a panther, then bounded past him, then seized a garden stool, and hurling it at his head with blistering curses, ran through the garden to the river. For the first time I found voice to say—Great God—she will drown herself! and before the words were out of my mouth—a leap—a splash—and she had disappeared. A boat was near, into which two men jumped, and succeeded with her companion in catching hold of her dress, after she had twice sunk. Pale, gasping, in her tawdry, dripping finery, she was dragged on shore. One of the men turning to her companion said, "another twenty-five cents due for fishing her out." Then two or three men—I suppose they called themselves men—took her under the arm-pits with her face downward, and two went behind and seized her by the heels, her drapery falling back from her knees, while other men of the same stamp walked behind gazing at her exposed limbs. Then they laid her upon a garden bench with her white face upturned to the fair sky, and stood over the gasping, sobbing creature, with less feeling than they would gaze upon a maimed horse or dog; her dress, torn from her neck, revealing to their beastly gaze youth and beauty which God never made for this desecration.

Oh! could I by a word have summoned the advocates of Free Love to that spot—then and there would I have given them my dumb, eloquent answer to their nauseous, hell-begotten doctrines. I would have summoned thither those women who have lately stood up in public as champions of their sex's "rights" (Heaven defend us from their polluted, polluting tongues), and bade them look upon what they must know to be the inevitable end of promiscuous "affinity." I would have summoned there those men of position in the community, who sit in their carpeted, well-stocked library, and in full view of their household gods—within sound of the innocent prattle of their own children—by their own yet undesecrated hearthstones—write fine-spun theories upon Free-Love, claiming for its brazen female advocates the title of "modest" women! I would have summoned thither the editors of those respectable daily journals, who publish in their columns the sophistical effusions of such men, and bade them, one and all, look upon that young, gasping girl, and the coarse men who stood by and jeered at her.

As I turned soul-sick away, I saw a woman standing at a little distance with an infant in her arms, her face white with fear. As she gave a last glance at the girl she pressed her babe convulsively to her breast and covered its innocent face with kisses. The action was suggestive. Alas, just so must that lost young girl's mother once have kissed her!

How Easy to Say "be Cheerful"!—"Be cheerful," says the man who is easy in his circumstances, missing no loved face at the table, nor by the hearth. But does he ever consider how hard it may be to be "cheerful" when the heart aches, and the cupboard is empty, and there are little fresh graves in the churchyard, and friends are few or indifferent, and even God, for the time being, seems to have forgotten us, so desolate is our lot? How difficult for one man to understand another, in such different circumstances! How easy to say, "Be cheerful!" How hard he would find it to practise it, were he stripped of all life's brightness!