of an enormous stock of lemonade, ginger-beer, and soda-water before three o’clock,—­but, till this was all gone, not half a dozen glasses of intoxicating drinks.  We saw no quarrelling, no drunkenness, and nothing like the fearful disorder which had been described,—­with a few such exceptions as we have mentioned of native Americans who had no conception of enjoyment free from bodily excitement.

To teach and induce habits of orderly, tranquil, contemplative, or social amusement, moderate exercises and recreation, soothing to the nerves, has been the most needed “mission” for New York.  We think we see daily evidence that the Park accomplishes not a little in this way.  Unfortunately, the evidence is not of a character to be expressed in Federal currency, else the Commissioners would not be hesitating about taking the ground from One-Hundred-and-Sixth to One-Hundred-and-Tenth Street, because it is to cost half a million more than was anticipated.  What the Park is worth to us to-day is, we trust, but a trifle to what it will be worth when the bulk of our hard-working people, of our over-anxious Marthas, and our gutter-skating children shall live nearer to it, and more generally understand what it offers them,—­when its play-grounds are ready, its walks more shaded,—­when cheap and wholesome meals, to the saving, occasionally, of the dreary housewife’s daily pottering, are to be had upon it,—­when its system of cheap cabs shall have been successfully inaugurated,—­and when a daily discourse of sweet sounds shall have been made an essential part of its functions in the body-politic.

We shall not probably live to see “the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney made universal,” but we do hope that we shall live to know many residents of towns of ten thousand population who will be ashamed to subscribe for the building of new churches while no public play-ground is being prepared for their people.

LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS.

  “Is this the end? 
  O Life, as futile, then, as frail! 
  What hope of answer or redress?”

A cloudy day:  do you know what that is in a town of iron-works?  The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable.  The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings.  It stifles me.  I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer’s shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their pipes.  I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air.

The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke.  It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets.  Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,—­clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by.  The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides.  Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black.  Smoke everywhere!  A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me.  Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream,—­almost worn out, I think.