“It’s too early yet for Leonard,” continued Basil; “what a pity the church-yard is locked up.  We could spend the time so delightfully in it.  But, never mind; let us go down to the Battery,—­it ’s not a very pleasant place, but it’s near, and it’s historical, and it’s open,—­where these drowsy friends of ours used to take the air when they were in the fashion, and had some occasion for the element in its freshness.  You can imagine—­it’s cheap—­how they used to see Mr. Burr and Mr. Hamilton down there.”

All places that fashion has once loved and abandoned are very melancholy; but of all such places, I think the Battery is the most forlorn.  Are there some sickly locust-trees there that cast a tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass-plots?  I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass-plots, or rather the spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery.  At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient promenade, a few scant and hungry-eyed little boys and girls were wandering over this weedy growth, not playing, but moving listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild inaptness of their costumes.  One of these little creatures wore, with an odd involuntary jauntiness, the cast-off best drew of some happier child, a gay little garment cut low in the neck and short in the sleeves, which gave her the grotesque effect of having been at a party the night before.  Presently came two jaded women, a mother and a grandmother, that appeared, when they had crawled out of their beds, to have put on only so much clothing as the law compelled.  They abandoned themselves upon the green stuff, whatever it was, and, with their lean hands clasped outside their knees, sat and stared, silent and hopeless, at the eastern sky, at the heart of the terrible furnace, into which in those days the world seemed cast to be burnt up, while the child which the younger woman had brought with her feebly wailed unheeded at her side.  On one side of these women were the shameless houses out of which they might have crept, and which somehow suggested riotous maritime dissipation; on the other side were those houses in which had once dwelt rich and famous folk, but which were now dropping down the boarding-house scale through various un-homelike occupations to final dishonor and despair.  Down nearer the water, and not far from the castle that was once a playhouse and is now the depot of emigration, stood certain express-wagons, and about these lounged a few hard-looking men.  Beyond laughed and danced the fresh blue water of the bay, dotted with sails and smokestacks.

“Well,” said Basil, “I think if I could choose, I should like to be a friendless German boy, setting foot for the first time on this happy continent.  Fancy his rapture on beholding this lovely spot, and these charming American faces!  What a smiling aspect life in the New World must wear to his young eyes, and how his heart must leap within him!”