twenty drinks with any one of his customers that he can prove such doctrines at fault.  He can secure the election of his favorite candidate with the same facility that he can make an hundred paupers per week.  You may well believe him a choice flower in the bouquet of the corporation; we mean the corporation that banquets and becomes jubilant while assassins stab their victims in the broad street-that becomes befogged while bands of ruffians disgrace the city with their fiendish outrages-that makes presidents and drinks whiskey when the city would seem given over to the swell-mobsman-when no security is offered to life, and wholesale harlotry, flaunting with naked arms and bared bosoms, passes along in possession of Broadway by night.

It is the night succeeding the day Lady Swiggs discovered, at the house of the Foreign Missions, the loss of her cherished donations.  As this is a world of disappointments, Lady Swiggs resigns herself to this most galling of all, and with her Milton firmly grasped in her hand, may be seen in a little room at Sister Scudder’s, rocking herself in the arm-chair, and wondering if Brother Spyke has captured the robber-wretch.  A chilly wind howls, and a drizzling rain falls thick over the dingy dwellings of the Points, which, sullen and dark, seem in a dripping mood.  A glimmering light, here and there, throws curious shadows over the liquid streets.  Now the drenched form of some half-naked and homeless being is reflected, standing shivering in the entrance to some dark and narrow alley; then the half-crazed inebriate hurries into the open door of a dismal cellar, or seeks eagerly a shelter for his bewildered head, in some suspicious den.  Flashing through the shadow of the police lamp, in “Cow Bay,” a forlorn female is seen, a bottle held tightly under her shawl.  Sailing as it were into the bottomless pit of the house of the Nine Nations, then suddenly returning with the drug, seeking the cheerless garret of her dissolute partner, and there striving to blunt her feelings against the horrors of starvation.

Two men stand, an umbrella over their heads, at the corner, in the glare of the bottomless pit, which is in a blaze of light, and crowded with savage-faced figures, of various ages and colors,—­all habited in the poison-seller’s uniform of rags.  “I don’t think you’ll find him here, sir,” says one, addressing the other, who is tall and slender of person, and singularly timid.  “God knows I am a stranger here.  To-morrow I leave for Antioch,” is the reply, delivered in nervous accents.  The one is Brother Syngleton Spyke, the other Mr. Detective Fitzgerald, a man of more than middle stature, with compact figure, firmly-knit limbs, and an expression of countenance rather pleasant.