Our New York Letter.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 934, 24 January 1890, Page 8

Our New York Letter.

Art came in with a rush this week, and all New York and bis wife, who have been on the tiptoe of expectation for months, have been gratified by a peep at Millet’s Angelas. The day of the press view I went up to the American Art Galleries expecting that at least, for the few hours set apart f->r that purpose, I should meet none but my fellow scribes. The purpose of the first Fall opemug ot the American Art Galleries, was the exhibition of the Barrie collection of sculptures and bronzes by that celebrated master and of illustrating the condition of Art thirty years ago. But the rush was so fearful that I postponed my visit to a later day, for it was impossible to see the works of art with any degree of pleasure or to form a discriminating opinion concerning them. Bat as I stood at the door and saw men and women pushing and squeezing to get in I could not help asking myself, What is all this about 2 Nob oue in a hundred of them had ever beard about Barrie or bis art, but every one of them had heard of Millet. Not oue in twenty knew much about Millet. They could not have told you whether he was an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, or a Swede, but they all knew that he had painted a picture called i'ne Angelas, and that it co3t the lucky possessor one hundred aud twelve thousand dollars, aud they wanted to see it. Many, no doubt, went in expecting' to see a magnificent canvas that would cover the aide of a wall, iustead of which it ia a little picture that a man might carry off under his arm. Later on Dshall have occa ioa to speak of it more fully, but I confess in advance it will take me si>me time to discover where, on a canvas 22x28, you can put one hundred and twelve thousand doJars.

Now, recollect that this money was not paid by some purse-proud amateur with more money than brains, but by a sharp, shrewd, cautious, close picture buyer, a man who - is posted in everything connected with Art, anVi who has handled and sold as many bna and expensive pictures, as any other Art dealer in the country—the man who sold Jules Breton’s Communicants ab the Morgan sale, for forty-five thousaud five hundred dolDra, and who got from Walters of Baltimore eighteen thousand dollars for the Peach Blow Vase, making it the most costly piece of bric-a-brac of its size in the world. I refer to Mr Sutton, one of the pioprietors of the American Art Galleries ; and right here comes a question which has set the Art world all aflame, and whiob, like the ghost of Banquo, will not go down. Jf the Angelas had beeu br ughfc here for sale it would have had to pay a duty of nearly forty-four thousand dollars, bringing the price of it, landed in New York, at nearly one hundred aud fifty thousand dollars, in fact, fully more it we count freight and insurance. But the Angelus is admitted free of duty to be exhibited and sent back, and the Art dealers complain vhafc while it is here ostensibly for exhibition it really accomplishes all the purpose of a sale for its fortunate owner, who will exhibit it here and probably make fifty or seventy-five thousand dollars by the exhibition, and then if it goes back they go scot-free of the duty. This the other Art dealers say is a manifest injustice, a 3 they are compelled to pay the duties, thirty-three per cent, before they can open their pictures and pub them on exhibition, and then they have to take their chance of finding a buyer. The general sentiment appears to be in favour of the abolishment oi all duties on Art iu painting or sculpture, and a very stroug effort to that end will be made in the next Congress. This week I strolled over to Castle Garden, the great emigrant depot of the American Continent. It is a strange place, and you never realise it more than when four or five steamers arrive in a single day. They land a conglomeration of every nationality, of not only Europe, but of Asia and Africa. It mi»y be called tne emigrant custom-house, for here the cargoes are examined, and are passed, if found worthy, and if riot they are seat back. But it very often occurs that the Commissioners of Emigration, who by the way are a lot of pot house politicians, who owe their position to their pull, mistake the extent of their powers, and constitute themselves as a amt of moral police. They are continually fighting among themselves, the hardest butt es°bcing for the bones which they can throw to their individual followers. But one of the most remarkable use 3 that Castle Garden has been put to ia as a matri-

monial agency, and the matches made there [ ,annnally is by no means small. Only a short time ago the keeper of the lightship outside J of Snndv Hook came to Castle Garden looking for a wife, his object being to secure a cook, and at the same time to pocket the emoluments that the Government offers for that useful person. It suddenly occurred to tbegentlernan having charge of the matrimonial branch of the service that he had seen that aucient mariner there before ‘ Many a time, and oft.' On being questioned he acknowledged the fact that this was his fourth requisition, and that his last heartsease was a stout Irishwoman who had succumbed to the inevitable, and started up the golden stairs exactly three weeks before ; her predecessor was a Swede, and his first a Dutch woman. ' But the lightship afforded no'chahce for flirtation or display, nothing &ut cook, cook, and scrub, scrub, scrub, and the eternal murmur of the ‘sad sea waves.’ Now a passenger at sea, however long the voyage, has some hope of getting a3liore, but from the lightship there was no release but death.! The ancient mariner had a tolerably easy time with his first two consolers, but when he secured the affections of N'iss Bridget McCarty he struck a snag which made him wish himself in the Paradise of Fiddler’s Green a hundred times. Bridget did not belong to the meek and lowly like his first two wives ; with them he had things all his own way, but the honeymoon was hardly over till she made his life a burden, when death stepped in again and made him a free man. Bridget was a holy terror, so no more Irish need apply." Number four, I believe, is an Italian. So late news from the lightship. One applicant sent a letter some weeks ago : Dilouth. Sept. twenty. Deer Sur, Mister Kasai Kermisins—l heer you have menny likely young wimmen farreners lookin’ fur situations. I should like to in gage one fer to be my wife ef she is strong an’ healthjv and has no disease. I should like her to be tolerably tall, well put up, an’ good lookin’ as I am myself, ef you know ef enny sich send em along guess we and get away with a half a dussen right around here. —Your obedient survaut to kommand.

James Russel Smith. P.S —Should prefer a woman with some little munney and plenty of close. This week an old Irish farmer from Connecticut who said he was worth eighty thousand dollars, applied for a wife fresh from the ould sod, but up to Saturday he had failed to find exactly the article he wanted. The arbitrary power exercised by these Commissioners in sending persons back has been one of the crying scandals of the city. Only last week a woman was sent back on the allegation that she was an alien and likely to become a public charge. She came here many years ago, and lived with her husband in New Jersey. A son was born to them, then the husband was taken sick and died, and the woman went back to Scotland with her child ; two weeks ago she returned and was ordered back to Scotland by the Commissioners. Her son was a native born American citizen, and if he got as lucky a lift as Turner, the young iceman, who three weeks ago was driving an ice cart, and now is nominated by Tammany for Congress, this young citizen might one day occupy the seat recently warmed by Grover Cleveland and now filled by Benjamin Hairison. An appeal was taken on the mother’s behalf to the Secretary of tbe Treasury, and Mr Windom with his level head decided at once that there was no power within or without the constitution to turn a native born citizen from our gates. The attorney returned back from Washington beaming with smiles and prepared to annihilate the Commissioners, but when he arrived in New York he found that his client had been shipped back to Scotland three days before. The infamy of this ruling is right here. Every week or two a cargo of Mormons is shipped for Salt Lake. One half or more of these are assisted immigrants whose passage is paid by some one, and who have not a dollar pockets. Among them are hundreds of young girls who have been gathered in by the elders and missionaries. Yet these are passed without question. Have the saints got a pull in New York ? * I spec so. ’ Speaking of pulls we have just discovered another which has set us all thinking. The

docks are all rented by the city, except those which are private property. I had no idea, and I thought I was fly on most things about town, that a Dock Commissioner’s was such a good billet. There was a dock to let which should have been put up by public competition, but this particular dock was not. An Italian gentleman from Tipperary be the noiine av O Brien got a letter from a Judge to one of the Commissioners, and O’Brien got the wharf at a rental of six thousand dollars, for which a dozen parties were willing to pay twenty. When this was discovered there was a hustling about to find Mister O’Brien, but O’Brien could not be found ; he might have gone back to Donegal or Sligo, but although the O’Brien family is prolific in New York this particular O’Brien that rented the wharf had vanished. Then it was hinted that his name wasn’t O’Brien at all. It might have been Smithy or Brown, or Finnegan, but not O’Brien. And it now looks as though the job was put up by. some one inside the Commissioners’ office, and a nice little operation started by which a favoured insider gets fourteen thousand dollars without raising a hand. In the course of investigation' it transpired that one iik&’vidual had added thirty.nine thousand nine hundred dollars to his bank account during the year. Not a bad plum that. Yet that a only one of a thousand ways in which this city is robbed. Broadbrim.