and bird men haunt the neighborhood of the Astor House and St.
Nicholas hotels. They get high prices for their pets. Dogs sell
readily. It is the fashion in New York to discourage the increase of
families, and to attempt to satisfy the half-smothered maternal instinct
by petting these dumb creatures.

Little girls are numerous among the street venders. They sell matches,
tooth-picks, cigars, newspapers, songs and flowers. The flower-girls are
hideous little creatures, but their wares are beautiful and command a
ready sale. These are made into hand bouquets, and buttonhole bouquets,
and command from ten cents to several dollars each. When the day is wet
and gloomy, and the slush and the mud of Broadway are thick over
everything animate and inanimate, and the sensitive soul shrinks within
itself at the sight of so much discomfort, the flower-girls do a good
business. The flower-stands then constitute the most attractive objects
on the street, and men are irresistibly drawn to them by the sight of
their exquisite adornments. It is very pleasant at such times to have a
bright, fragrant nosegay in one's buttonhole, or to carry a bouquet to
one's home. On such days you may see hundreds of splashed and muddy men
on the great thoroughfare, utterly hopeless of preserving any outward
semblance of neatness, but each with his nosegay in his buttonhole; and
as he glances down at it, from time to time, you may see his weary face
soften and brighten, and an expression of cheerfulness steal over it,
which renders him proof against even the depressing influences of the mud
and the rain.

LXXXIII. THE WHARVES.

No visitor to New York should omit visiting the wharves of the North and
East rivers. A day may be profitably spent on the shore of each stream.
The docks do not compare favorably with the massive structures of
Liverpool, or London, or the other great seaports of the world. They are
wretched, half decayed and dirty; but ere long they are to be replaced
with a system of magnificent stone and iron piers, which will afford all
the desired facilities, and render New York in this respect one of the
best provided ports on the globe.

Beginning at the Battery on the North River side, we find first the pier
of the famous Camden and Amboy Railway Company, from which passengers and
freights are conveyed to the railway by steamer. Above this are the
piers of the great European steamship lines, the coast steamers, and