tails and shame-faced looks, to search
for bones, and then, wounded in their self-respect by the very
act, they drag their osseous provender to a distance, and upon
some sunny mud-heap, dine in dainty neatness. The very pavement
is broken into countless hillocks and ruts like waves, as if, in
utter disgust at the place and its associations, the street was
trying to roll itself away in stony billows. The shattered wrecks
of worn-out drays and carts stand forsaken in the street, keeping
each other dismal company, while an occasional shackly wheelbarrow
makes the place look as though, after some monstrous fashion, it
were a lying-in hospital for poverty-stricken vehicles, and the
wheelbarrows were the new-born children, decrepit even in their
babyhood. The houses in this pleasant vale have a disheartened
tumble-down look, and give the impression of having been
originally built by apprentices out of second-hand material. They
lean maliciously over the narrow sidewalks, and keep up a
constant threatening of a sudden collapse and a general smash of
passers-by. If the houses are not dirtier than the street, it is
only because every possible element of filth enters into the
latter; if they are not dirtier inside than outside, it is
because superlatives have no superlative.

Pawnbrokers' shops are plentiful, kept always by sharp-featured
restless Jews, who watch for unwary passers-by like unclean
beasts crouching in noisome, dangerous lairs; while bar-rooms
yawn in frequent cellars to devour bodily the victims the Jews
only rob.

In this, one of the dirtiest streets in this dirty metropolis,
directly opposite the English Lutheran Church of St. James, in
one of the dirtiest tenant-houses in the street, abideth Madame
Leander Lent, the prophetess. Why the mysterious powers didn't
select an earthly representative with a more reputable dwelling-place
is a mystery; but there seems to be an inseparable congeniality
between prophetic knowledge and concentrated nastiness, utterly
beyond all power of explanation. The Madame advises the public of
her business in the terms following:

"ASTROLOGY.--Madame LEANDER LENT can be consulted about
love, marriage, and absent friends; she tells all the
events of life at No. 169 Mulberry-st., first floor,
back room. Ladies 25 cents; gents 50 cents. She causes
speedy marriage. Charge extra."

Her customers are much more addicted to love than marriage, so
that the wedl