loyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in
a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the
birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no
American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the
mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a
share in the heritage established for all by all.

And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the
wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compass, and I bounded
for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a
living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the
sentinels pacing before the Bridewell--that long two-storied prison,
built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and
next to that the massive rough stone prison, three stories high, where
in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.

"You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution," I said.

"Do they hang rebels there?" she asked, looking up at me so
wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering,
surprised at such beauty in a young girl's eyes.

"Where is King's College?" she asked. I showed her the building bounded
by Murray, Chapel, Barckley and Church streets, and then I pointed out
the upper barracks behind the jail, and the little lake beyond divided
by a neck of land on which stood the powder-house.

Far across the West Ward I could see the windows of Mr. Lispenard's
mansion shining in the setting sun, and the road to Greenwich winding
along the river.

She tired of my instruction after a while, and her eyes wandered to the
bay. A few ships lay off Paulus Hook; the Jersey shore seemed very
near, although full two miles distant, and the islands, too, seemed
close in-shore where the white wings of gulls flashed distantly.

A jack flew from the Battery, another above the fort, standing out
straight in the freshening breeze from the bay. Far away across the East
River I saw the accursed _Jersey_ swinging, her black, filthy bulwarks
gilded by the sun; and below, her devil's brood of hulks at anchor, all
with the wash hung out on deck a-drying in the wind.

"What are they?" she asked, surprising something else than the fixed
smile of deference in my face.

"Prison ships, madam. Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week
after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder--the one to
the east--stripped clean, wit