NEW YORK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 156, 28 April 1876, Page 15

NEW YORK.

FfiOM seven to seven, all day long, without a moment's break, the trucks, omnibuses, cars, carriages, and vans roll lengthwise of Manhattan Island and across it from river to river. You see no thinning out in the ranks of pedestrians, never for a moment miss the roar produced by wheels, and feet, and shouts, and yells. Yankee, Briton, French, Russian, German, Italian, and Turk, pass in review, dodging and elbowing, and one wonders where all the people come from, and where they can disappear. From dawn to dark New York is a maelstrom, never ceasing to whirl, and human beings are carried about on the circles like bits of wreck. The roar is a voice which speaks in ila own strange way of ships sailing in and sailing out ; of millions of bushels of cereals pouring into warehouses to be sent across the seas ; of a, mint of money paesing from hand to hand ; of muscle hammering at wood and iron and stone ; of minds planning humble homes and great edifices — of a thousand things spoken by no other voice. When the lamplightei starts out, New York feels his influence almost in a moment. The rolling vehicles are less in number, the roar is not so loud, and the poLce stationed along Broadway motion to pedestrians that the crossing is safe. The walks can hardly hold the multitudes which pass homeward when darkness shuts up the workshops, but by-and-by there is more room. The street cars come and go with greater speed, and the Jehns on Broadway crack their whips and cry " Care, there !"in a voice showing relief. New York is going to sleep. Thousands are yet passing to and fro, and gaslight makes everything as light as day almost, but half a million are in doors for the night.

_ At ten o'clock Broadway looks thirty feet wider, the street cars wait a little loDger to pick up passengers, and the 'bus drivers look around sharp. Iron blinds hide the gaslight, and the big stores put on a grim, forbidding look. You have room and to spare now to walk the length of Broadway, and a lone omnibus rattling over the stones carries but a single passenger. At midnight New York is asleep. There are more police than pedestrians abroad. A carriage passes now and theu, conveying some reveller or belated traveller, and up or down the street you may hear a shout from some one who has been forced homeward by the closing of a saloon. Your footfall brings a •trange echo, and "the officer startles| you as he steps out of & doorway after seeing that the door is secured against thieves. No. New York is not asleep. She never sleeps. Along the wharves men work night and day, ships come and go, and trains arrive and depart. There are thousands who work when others sleep, and under cover of darkness a thousand bad men skulk from corner to corner, and come and go through dark alleys. But she is at rest as a city. The great balance wheel of the mighty engine which drives h«r is still, and the fires under the great boilers smoulder and smoke. When day breaks the ragpicker moves, and the slamming of his door behind him awakens the ash sifters and the faggot gatherers. For half an hour New York is in the hands of those who gain their daily bread by the humblest occupations, and whose homes are in the garret or under the ground. They swarm out of narrow, diriy streets, and pour from half-hidden alleys, and they hurry along beside the curbstones, eyes on the ground, heads bent and a painful look of greed on their faces, greed mingled with the fear that some one will secure something of value ahead of them. At full daybreak saloons and restaurants begin to open, store porters remove shutters, workmen hurry along, and New York is shaking off sleep — the balance wheel begins to tremble. At seven the cars are rum... y *i\e omnibuses roll along, the walks teem with life, and like the rumu.. " distant thunder you hear the birth of the great roar which is to fill y0... earß till seveu comes again. — Telegram.