es and then
before them, like the "army" in a beggarly stage-show. Suppose that I
should really wish; some time or other, to get away from this everlasting
circle of revolving supernumeraries, where should I buy a ticket the like
of which was not in some of their pockets, or find a seat to which some
one of them was not a neighbor.

A little less than a year before, after the Ball's Bluff accident, the
Captain, then the Lieutenant, and myself had reposed for a night on our
homeward journey at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where we were lodged on the
ground-floor, and fared sumptuously. We were not so peculiarly fortunate
this time, the house being really very full. Farther from the flowers and
nearer to the stars,--to reach the neighborhood of which last the per
ardua of three or four flights of stairs was formidable for any mortal,
wounded or well.

The "vertical railway" settled that for us, however. It is a giant
corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which, by some divine judgment,
is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its position. This ascending
and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted, with cushioned seats, and is
watched over by two condemned souls, called conductors, one of whom is
said to be named Igion, and the other Sisyphus.

I love New York, because, as in Paris, everybody that lives in it feels
that it is his property,--at least, as much as it is anybody's. My
Broadway, in particular, I love almost as I used to love my Boulevards.
I went, therefore, with peculiar interest, on the day that we rested at
our grand hotel, to visit some new pleasure-grounds the citizens had been
arranging for us, and which I had not yet seen. The Central Park is an
expanse of wild country, well crumpled so as to form ridges which will
give views and hollows that will hold water. The hips and elbows and
other bones of Nature stick out here and there in the shape of rocks
which give character to the scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable
look to a landscape that without them would have been in danger of being
fattened by art and money out of all its native features. The roads were
fine, the sheets of water beautiful, the bridges handsome, the swans
elegant in their deportment, the grass green and as short as a fast
horse's winter coat. I could not learn whether it was kept so by
clipping or singeing. I was delighted with my new property,--but it cost
me four dollars to get there, so far was it beyond the Pillars