et with a perfect
madness. Instead of the white-kidded, be-ruffled gallants of Eld, you meet
a hurrying throng of pale, anxious faces, with tare, tret and speculation
in their eyes.

It is a business street, for Mammon has banished Fashion to the golden
precincts of Fifth Avenue. The green of Jeems' livery is, like himself,
invisible. He has departed this life--gone, like Hiawatha, to the Land of
the Hereafter--to the land of spirits, where we can conceive him to be in
his element; but he has a "town residence" in an obscure graveyard, with
his name and "recommendation" on a stone door-plate. His mundane superiors
are reclining beneath the shadow of St. Paul's steeple, where they are
regaled with some delectable music (if you would only think so) from the
balcony of the Museum opposite, and have the combined benefit of Barnum's
scenic-artist and the Drummond light.

The massive door-plate, and highly polished, distorted knocker, no longer
grace the oaken panels of number 85; but a republican sign over the
family-looking doorway tells you that "the front room, second floor," is
occupied by Messrs. Flint & Snarle. After passing up a flight of broad,
uncarpeted stairs, you again see the name of that respectable firm painted
on a light of ground glass set in the office door. Once on the other side
of that threshold, you breathe mercantile air. There have been so many
brain-trying interest calculations worked out on those high desks, that the
very atmosphere, figuratively speaking, is mathematical.

The sign should not read Flint & Snarle, for Snarle has been dead six
months, and it is not pleasant to contemplate a name without an owner--it
is not to every one, but Mr. Flint likes to read the sign, and think that
Snarle is dead. He was the reverse of Flint, and that his name should have
been _Snarle_ at all is odd, for in life he was the quintessence of
quietness, and the oil of good nature. But Flint is well named; he is
chalcedony at heart. Nobody says this, but everybody knows it. Nell, the
pretty match-girl, who sells her wares in Wall-street, never approaches
him, nor the newsboys; and blind men, with sagacious, half-fed dogs, steer
clear of him by instinct. _He_ doesn't tolerate paupers, and Italian
hand-organs with monkey accompaniments--not he.

The man who has not as much money as the surviving senior of Flint &
Snarle, is a dog--in Flint's distinguished estimation. His God is not that
divine Presence, whose thou