e trees. There are birds, not, to be sure, singing, but
cheerfully chirping; and there are occasional blazons of courageous
flowers; the benches beside the walks, which the northern blasts will
soon sweep bare, are still kept by the lovers and loafers who have
frequented them ever since the spring, and by the nurses, who cumber the
footway before them with their perambulators. The fat squirrels waddle
over the asphalt, and cock the impudent eye of the sturdy beggar at the
passer whom they suspect of latent peanuts; it is high carnival of the
children with hoops and balls; it is the supreme moment of the
saddle-donkeys in the by-paths, and the carriage-goats in the Mall, and
of the rowboats on the ponds, which presently will be withdrawn for
their secret hibernation, where no man can find them out. When the first
snow flies, even while it is yet poising for flight in the dim pits of
air, all these delights will have vanished, and the winter, which will
claim the city for its own through a good four months, will be upon it.

Always come back, therefore, if you must come at all, about the
beginning of November, and if you can manage to take in Election Day,
and especially Election Night, it will not be a bad notion. New York has
five saturnalia every year: New Year's Night, Decoration Day, Fourth of
July, Election Night, and Thanksgiving, and not the least of these is
Election Night. If it is a right first Tuesday of November, the daytime
wind will be veering from west to south and back, sun and cloud will
equally share the hours between them, and a not unnatural quiet, as of
political passions hushed under the blanket of the Australian ballot,
will prevail. The streets will be rather emptied than filled, and the
litter of straw and scrap-paper, and the ordure and other filth of the
great slattern town, will blow agreeably about under your feet and into
your eyes and teeth. But with the falling of the night there will be a
rise of the urban spirits; the sidewalks will thicken with citizens of
all ages and sexes and nations; and if you will then seek some large
centre for the cinematographic dissemination of the election news, you
will find yourself one of a multitude gloating on the scenes of comedy
and tragedy thrown up on the canvas to stay your impatience for the
returns. Along the curbstones are stationed wagons for the sale of the
wind and string instruments, whose raw, harsh discords of whistling and
twanging will beg