rs, the workman, even the
occasional tramp,--wherever they may come from or go to, or what their
real habitat may be,--are invariably Americans. I give it as an honest
record, whatever its significance or insignificance may be, that during
the last year, between the hours of six and eight A. M., in and about
the locality I have mentioned, I have met with but two unmistakable
foreigners, an Irishman and a German. Perhaps it may be necessary to
add to this statement that the people I have met at those early hours I
have never seen at any other time in the same locality.

As to their quality, the artisans were always cleanly dressed,
intelligent, and respectful. I remember, however, one morning, when
the ice storm of the preceding night had made the sidewalks glistening,
smiling and impassable, to have journeyed down the middle of Twelfth
Street with a mechanic so sooty as to absolutely leave a legible track
in the snowy pathway. He was the fireman attending the engine in a
noted manufactory, and in our brief conversation he told me many facts
regarding his profession which I fear interested me more than the
after-dinner speeches of some distinguished gentlemen I had heard the
preceding night. I remember that he spoke of his engine as "she," and
related certain circumstances regarding her inconsistency, her
aberrations, her pettishnesses, that seemed to justify the feminine
gender. I have a grateful recollection of him as being one who
introduced me to a restaurant where chicory, thinly disguised as
coffee, was served with bread at five cents a cup, and that he
honorably insisted on being the host, and paid his ten cents for our
mutual entertainment with the grace of a Barmecide. I remember, in a
more genial season,--I think early summer,--to have found upon the
benches of Washington Park a gentleman who informed me that his
profession was that of a "pigeon catcher"; that he contracted with
certain parties in this city to furnish these birds for what he called
their "pigeon-shoots"; and that in fulfilling this contract he often
was obliged to go as far west as Minnesota. The details he gave--his
methods of entrapping the birds, his study of their habits, his evident
belief that the city pigeon, however well provided for by parties who
fondly believed the bird to be their own, was really ferae naturae, and
consequently "game" for the pigeon-catcher--were all so interesting
that I listened to him with undisguised del