A peculiar hardihood and local wit are claimed for what are called the B’hoys.  A cockney, in pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, was walking up Broadway with the hospitable citizen to whose guidance he had been specially commended by a London correspondent.

“I want,” said the stranger, “to see a b’hoy,—­a real b’hoy.”

“There’s one,” replied his companion, pointing to a strapping fellow, in a red shirt and crush hat, waiting for a job at the corner.

“Ah, how curious!” replied John Bull, examining this new species with his double eye-glass,—­“very curious; I never saw a real b’hoy before.  I should like to hear him speak.”

“Then, why don’t you talk to him?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Ask him the way to Laight Street.”

The inquisitive traveller crossed the street, and, deferentially approaching the new genus, lisped, “Ha—­ah—­how d’ do, ha?  I want to go to Laight Street.”

“Then why in hell don’t you go?” loudly and gruffly asks the b’hoy.

Cockney nervously rejoined his friend, saying,—­“Very curious, the Broadway b’hoys!”

To realize the extent and character of the Celtic element in our population, walk down this thronged avenue on a holiday, when the Irish crowd the sidewalks, waiting for a pageant; and all you have ever read or dreamed of savagery will gleam, with latent fire, from those myriads of sullen or daredevil eyes, and lurk in the wild tones of those unchastened voices, as the untidy or gaudily dressed and interminable line of expectants, flushed with alcohol, yield surlily to the backward wave of the policeman’s baton.  The materials of riot in the heart of the vast and populous city then strike one with terror.  We see the worst elements of European life cast upon our shore, and impending, as it were, like a huge wave, over the peacefulness and prosperity of the nation.  The corruptions of New York local government are explained at a glance.  The reason why even patriotic citizens shrink from the primary meetings whence spring the practical issues of municipal rule is easily understood; and the absolute necessity of a reform in the legislative machinery, whereby property and character may find adequate representation, is brought home to the most careless observer of Broadway phenomena.  But it is when threading the normal procession therein that distrust wanes, in view of so much that is hopeful in enterprise and education, and auspicious in social intelligence and sympathy.  It may be that on one of our bright and balmy days of early spring, or on a cool and radiant autumnal afternoon, you behold, in your walk from Union Square to the Battery, an eminent representative of each function and phase of high civilization;—­wealth vested in real estate in the person of an Astor, peerless nautical architecture in a Webb; the alert step and venerable head of the poet of nature, as Bryant glides by, and the still bright eye of the poet of patriotism