assed on. To
one penniless and hungry, it seemed a deal of money. Necessity had
almost driven me to the sign of the 'Three Martyrs,' to see what the man
of the eagle face would give me on my cap, for they said the man at the
'Three Martyrs' lent money on rags such as I had. I followed the woman,
for there was something so good in the act that I could not resist it.
She entered a fine house in Leonard street.

"You must now go with me into the den of Hag Zogbaum, in 'Scorpion
Cove;' and 'Scorpion Cove' is in Pell street. Necessity next drove me
there. It is early spring, we will suppose; and being in the Bowery, we
find the streets in its vicinity reeking with putrid matter, hurling
pestilence into the dark dwellings of the unknown poor, and making
thankful the coffin-maker, who in turn thanks a nonundertaking
corporation for the rich harvest. The muck is everywhere deep enough
for hogs and fat aldermen to wallow in, and would serve well the
purposes of a supper-eating corporation, whose chief business it was to
fatten turtles and make Presidents.

"We have got through the muck of the mucky Bowery. Let us turn to the
left as we ascend the hill from Chatham street, and into a narrow,
winding way, called Doyer's street. Dutch Sophy, then, as now, sits in
all the good nature of her short, fat figure, serving her customers with
ices, at three cents. Her cunning black eyes and cheerful, ruddy face,
enhance the air of pertness that has made her a favorite with her
customers. We will pass the little wooden shop, where Mr. Saunders makes
boots of the latest style, and where old lapstone, with curious framed
spectacles tied over his bleared eyes, has for the last forty years been
seen at the window trimming welts, and mending every one's sole but his
own; we will pass the four story wooden house that the landlord never
paints--that has the little square windows, and the little square door,
and the two little iron hand rails that curl so crabbedly at the ends,
and guard four crabbeder steps that give ingress and egress to its swarm
of poor but honest tenants; we will pass the shop where a short, stylish
sign tells us Mr. Robertson makes bedsteads; and the little, slanting
house a line of yellow letters on a square of black tin tells us is a
select school for young ladies, and the bright, dainty looking house
with the green shutters, where lives Mr. Vredenburg the carpenter, who,
the neighbors say, has got up in the world, and pai