ang lasciviously over "half-doors,"
taunt the dreamy policeman on his round, and beckon the unwary stranger
into their dens. Piles of filth one might imagine had been thrown up by
the devil or the street commissioner, and in which you might bury a
dozen fat aldermen without missing one; little shops where unwholesome
food is sold; corner shops where idlers of every color, and sharpers of
all grades, sit dreaming out the day over their gin--are here to be
found. Young Ireland would, indeed, seem to have made this the citadel
from which to vomit his vice over the city.

"They're perfectly wild, Madam--these children are," says Mr.
Toddleworth, in reply to a question Mrs. Swiggs put respecting the
immense number of ragged and profaning urchins that swarm the streets.
"They never heard of the Bible, nor God, nor that sort of thing. How
could they hear of it? No one ever comes in here--that is, they come in
now and then, and throw a bit of a tract in here and there, and are glad
to get out with a whole coat. The tracts are all Greek to the dwellers
here. Besides that, you see, something must be done for the belly,
before you can patch up the head. I say this with a fruitful experience.
A good, kind little man, who seems earnest in the welfare of these wild
little children that you see running about here--not the half of them
know their parents--looks in now and then, acts as if he wasn't afraid
of us, (that is a good deal, Madam) and the boys are beginning to take
to him. But, with nothing but his kind heart and earnest resolution,
he'll find a rugged mountain to move. If he move it, he will deserve a
monument of fairest marble erected to his memory, and letters of gold
to emblazon his deeds thereon. He seems to understand the key to some of
their affections. It's no use mending the sails without making safe the
hull."

At this moment Mrs. Swiggs' attention is attracted by a crowd of ragged
urchins and grotesque-looking men, gathered about a heap of filth at
that corner of Orange street that opens into the Points.

"They are disinterring his Honor, the Mayor," says Mr. Toddleworth. "Do
this sort of thing every day, Madam; they mean no harm, you see."

Mrs. Swiggs, curious to witness the process of disinterring so
distinguished a person, forgets entirely her appointment at the House of
the Foreign Missions, crowds her way into the filthy throng, and watches
with intense anxiety a vacant-looking idiot, who has seen some six