rior and wonderful Mrs. Hayes, he might find the bride for
whom he pined. With hope slightly renewed within his speculative
breast, he set off joyfully for the designated domicile, which he
achieved in the due course of travel.

The house No. 176 Grand Street is a brick two-story dwelling, of
a dingy drab color, as though it had been steeped in a Quaker
atmosphere and had there imbibed its color, which had since been
overlaid with "world's people's" dirt.

The door was opened by Mrs. Hayes in person, her body on this
occasion being sent with her spirit to do a bit of drudgery.

She is a woman of the most abject and cringing manner
imaginable; a female counterpart of Uriah Heep, with an unknown
multiplication of that vermicular gentleman's writhings; she wore
no hoops, she would have squirmed herself out of them in an
instant; her dress was fastened securely on with numerous visible
hooks and eyes, and pins, and strings, in spite of which
precautions her visitor expected to see her worm out of it before
she got up stairs, and would scarcely have been astonished to see
her jerk her skeleton out of her skin, and complete her errand in
her bones.

With a propitiating bow, whose intense servility would have
become Mr. Sampson Brass in the day of his discomfiture, she
asked her customer into the house, cringingly preceded him up
stairs, deferentially placed a chair, and abjectly departed into
an inner room, pausing at the door to execute an obsequious
wriggle, and to once more humble herself in the dust (of which
there was plenty) before her astonished visitor.

The reception-room to which she led him, is an apartment of
moderate size, from the front windows of which the beholder may
regale his eyes with a comprehensive view of Centre Market and
its charming surroundings; Mott and Mulberry Streets lie just
beyond, and the Tombs are visible in the dim distance. The room
was furnished with a superfluity of gaudy furniture; and sofas,
tables, chairs and pictures, crowded and elbowed each other,
showing plainly that the upholstery of a couple, at least, of
parlors had been there compressed into a bedroom.

From the inner room came a great sound, made up of so many
household ingredients as to defy accurate analysis--but the crying
of babies, the frizzling of cooking meat, the scraping of
saucepans, and a sound of somebody scolding everybody else,
predominated.

The voyager was unprepared for any _Mister_ Hayes, having t