e, generally,
have put up their shutters, and the time for closing the
drinking-saloons is at hand; but lights are yet lingering in the
pawnbroker's establishments, for the _Mont de Piete_ is an institution
of an extremely wakeful, not to say wide-awake, kind.

Now the Bowery widens gradually to the northward, and may be likened to
a river that turns to an estuary ere it joins the waters of the main.
The vast and hideous brown-stone delta of the Cooper Institute divides
it into two channels,--Third Avenue to the right, Fourth Avenue to the
left. Properly the Bowery may be said to end here; but only a few
blocks farther on, at the corner of Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street,
is marked the spot where stood the gateway leading to the original
_Bouwery_, the old mansion in which Peter Stuyvesant dwelt when New
Amsterdam was, but as yet no New York. And here, till within a few
months, stood the traditional Stuyvesant pear-tree, said to have been
brought from Holland, and planted by the hands of the old Dutch Governor
himself. Spring-time after spring-time, until within a year or two past,
the Stuyvesant pear-tree used to blossom, and its blossoms run to fruit.
It lived, in a very gnarled and rheumatic condition, until the 26th of
February last, when it sank quietly down to rest, and nothing but the
rusty old iron railing is left to show where it stood.

STEPHEN C. FOSTER AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY.

Thirty-six years ago a young man, about twenty-five years of age, of a
commanding height,--six feet full, the heels of his boots not included
in the reckoning,--and dressed in scrupulous keeping with the fashion of
the time, might have been seen sauntering idly along one of the
principal streets of Cincinnati. To the few who could claim acquaintance
with him he was known as an actor, playing at the time referred to a
short engagement as light comedian in a theatre of that city. He does
not seem to have attained to any noticeable degree of eminence in his
profession, but he had established for himself a reputation among jolly
fellows in a social way. He could tell a story, sing a song, and dance a
hornpipe, after a style which, however unequal to complete success on
the stage, proved, in private performance to select circles rendered
appreciative by accessory refreshments, famously triumphant always. If
it must be confessed that he was deficient in the more profound
qualities, it is not to be inferred that he was destitute of