d wonder. Evidently they could not understand what it meant:
people drinking, smoking in public, on Sunday, and yet not excited, not
trying to make it a spree. It was not comprehensible. We ascertained
that one of the ferry-boat bars had disposed of an enormous stock of
lemonade, ginger-beer, and soda-water before three o'clock,--but, till
this was all gone, not half a dozen glasses of intoxicating drinks.
We saw no quarrelling, no drunkenness, and nothing like the fearful
disorder which had been described,--with a few such exceptions as we
have mentioned of native Americans who had no conception of enjoyment
free from bodily excitement.

To teach and induce habits of orderly, tranquil, contemplative, or
social amusement, moderate exercises and recreation, soothing to the
nerves, has been the most needed "mission" for New York. We think we
see daily evidence that the Park accomplishes not a little in this way.
Unfortunately, the evidence is not of a character to be expressed in
Federal currency, else the Commissioners would not be hesitating about
taking the ground from One-Hundred-and-Sixth to One-Hundred-and-Tenth
Street, because it is to cost half a million more than was anticipated.
What the Park is worth to us to-day is, we trust, but a trifle to what
it will be worth when the bulk of our hard-working people, of our
over-anxious Marthas, and our gutter-skating children shall live nearer
to it, and more generally understand what it offers them,--when its
play-grounds are ready, its walks more shaded,--when cheap and wholesome
meals, to the saving, occasionally, of the dreary housewife's daily
pottering, are to be had upon it,--when its system of cheap cabs shall
have been successfully inaugurated,--and when a daily discourse of sweet
sounds shall have been made an essential part of its functions in the
body-politic.

We shall not probably live to see "the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney
made universal," but we do hope that we shall live to know many
residents of towns of ten thousand population who will be ashamed to
subscribe for the building of new churches while no public play-ground
is being prepared for their people.

LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS.

"Is this the end?
O Life, as futile, then, as frail!
What hope of answer or redress?"

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky
sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy
with the breath of cro