only hope of on escape from self-destruction. Let us walk, if you please."

Led on, in the profoundest melancholy, by this chastened character, Mr. DIBBLE and the Flowerpot were presently toiling hotly through a succession of grievous side-streets, and forlorn short-cuts to dismal ferries; the state of their conductor's spirits inclining him to find a certain refreshingly solemn joy in the horrors of pedestrianism imposed by obstructions of merchandise on side-walks, and repeated climbings over skids extending from store doors to drays. Inspired to an extraordinary flow of malignant animal spirits by the complexities of travel incident to the odorous mazes of some hundred odd kegs of salt mackerel and boxes of brown soap impressively stacked before one very enterprising Commission house, Mr. BENTHAM lightened the journey with anecdotes of self-made Commission men who had risen in life by breaking human legs and city ordinances; and dwelt emotionally upon the scenes in the city hospitals where ladies and gentlemen were brought in, with nails from the hoops of sugar-hogsheads sticking into their feet, or limbs dislocated from too-loftily piled firkins of butter falling upon them. Through incredible hardships, and amongst astounding complications of horse-cars, target companies, and barrels of everything, Mr. BENTHAM also amused his friends with circuits of several of the fine public markets of New York; explaining to them the relations of the various miasmatic smells of those quaint edifices with the various devastating diseases of the day, and expatiating quite eloquently upon the political corruption involved in the renting of the stalls, and the fine openings there were for Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Fish and Vegetable departments. Then, as a last treat, he led his panting companions through several lively up-hill blocks of drug-mills and tobacco firms, to where they had a distant view of a tenement house next door to a kerosene factory, where, as he vivaciously told them, in the event of a fire, at least one hundred human beings would be slowly done to a turn. After which all three returned from their walk, firmly convinced that an unctuous vein of humor had been conscientiously worked, and abstractedly wishing themselves dead.^[1]

The exhilarating effect of the genial Comic Paper man upon FLORA did not, indeed, pass away, until she and Miss CAROWTHERS were in their appointed quarters under the roof of Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, whither they went immediately upon the arrival of the elder spinster from Bumsteadville.

"It could have been wished, my good woman," said Miss CAROWTHERS, casting a rather disparaging look around the death-chamber of the late Mr. SKAMMERHORN, "that you had assigned to educated single young ladies, like ourselves, an apartment less suggestive of Man in his wedded aspects. The spectacle of a pair of pegged boots sticking out from under a bed, and a razor and a hone grouped on the mantle-shelf, is not such as I should desire to encourage in the dormitory of a pupil under my tuition."

"That's much to be deplored, I'm sure, CAROWTHERS," returned Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, severely, "and sorry am I that I ever married, on that particular account. I'd not have done it, if you'd only told me. But, seeing that I married SKAMMERHORN, and then he died delirious, his boots and razor must remain, just as he often wished to throw the former at me in his ravings. Once married is enough, say I; and those who never were, through having no proposals, must bear with those who have, and take things as they come."

"There are those, I'd have you know, Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, to whom proposals have been no inducement," said Miss CAROWTHERS, sharply; "or, if being made, and then withdrawn, have given our sex opportunities to prove, in courts of law, that damages can still be got. I'm afraid of no Man, my good woman, as a person named BLODGETT once learned from a jury; but boots and razors are not what I would have familiar to the mind of one who never had a husband to die in raging torments, nor yet has sued for breach."

"Miss POTTS is but a chicken, I'll admit," retorted Mrs. SKAMMERHORN; "but you're not such, CAROWTHERS, by many a good year. On the contrary, quite a hen. Then, you being with her, if the boots and razor make her think she sees that poor, weak SKAMMERHORN a-ranging round the room, when in his grave it is his place to be, you've only got to say: 'A fool you are, and always were,'—as often I, myself, called at him in his lifetime,—and off he'll go into his tomb again for fear of broomsticks."

"FLORA, my dear," said Miss CAROWTHERS, turning with dignity to her pupil, "if I know anything of human nature, the man who has once got away from here, will stay away. Only single ghosts have attachments for the houses in which they once lived. So, never mind the boots and razor, darling; which, after all, if seen by peddlers, or men who come to fix the gas, might keep us safe from robbers."

"As safe as any man himself, young woman, with pistols under his head that he would never dare to fire if robbers were no more than cats rampaging," added Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, enthusiastically. "With nothing but an old black hat of SKAMMERHORN'S, and walking-cane, kept hanging in the hall, I haven't lost a spoon by tramps or census takers for six mortal years. So, make yourselves at home, I beg you both, while I go down and cook the liver for our dinner. You'll find it tender as a chicken, after what you've broke your teeth upon in boarding-schools; though SKAMMERHORN declared it made him bilious in the second year, forgetting what he'd drank with sugar to his taste, beforehand."

Thus was sweet FLORA POTTS introduced to her new home; where, but for looking down from her windows at the fashions, making-up hundreds of bows of ribbons for her neck, and making-over all her dresses, her woman's mind must have been a blank. What time Miss CAROWTHERS told her all day how she looked in this or that style of wearing her hair, and read her to sleep each night with extracts from the pages of cheery HANNAH MORE. As for the object nearest her young heart, to say that she was wholly unruffled by it would be inaccurate; but by address she kept it hidden from all eyes save her own.

[1]      Ordinary readers, while admiring the heavy humor of this unexpected open-air episode, may wonder what on earth it has to do with the the Story; but the cultivated few, understanding the ingenious mechanics of novel-writing, will appreciate it as a most skilful and happy device to cover the interval between the hiring of Mrs. SKAMMERHORN's room, and the occupation thereof by FLORA and her late teacher—another instance of what our profoundly critical American journals call "artistic—elaboration." (See corresponding Chapter of the original English Story.)

CHAPTER XXIII.

GOING HOME IN THE MORNING.

After having thrown all his Ritualistic friends at home into a most unholy and exasperated condition of mind, by a steady series of vague remarks as to the extreme likelihood of their united implication in the possible deed of darkness by which he has lost a broadcloth nephew and an alpaca umbrella, the mournful Mr. BUMSTEAD is once more awaiting the dawn in that popular retreat in Mulberry Street where he first contracted his taste for cloves. The Assistant-Assessor and the Alderman of the Ward are again there, tilted back against the wall in their chairs; their shares in the Congressional Nominating Convention held in that room earlier in the night having left them too weary for further locomotion. The decanters and tumblers hurled by the Nominating Convention over the question of which Irishman could drink the most to be nominated, are still scattered about the floor; here and there a forgotten slungshot marks the places where rival delegations have confidently presented their claims for recognition; and a few bullet-holes in the wall above the bar enumerate the various pauses in the great debate upon the perils of the public peace from Negro Suffrage.

Reclining with great ease of attitude upon an uncushioned settee, the Ritualistic organist is aroused from dreamy slumber by the turning-over of the pipe in his mouth, and majestically motions for the venerable woman of the house to come and brush the ashes from his clothes.

"Wud yez have it filled again, honey?" asks the woman. "Sure, wan pipe more would do ye no harrum."

"I'mtooshleepy," he says, dropping the pipe.

"An' are yez too shlapey, asthore, to talk a little bissiness wid an ould woman?" she asks, insinuatingly. "Couldn't yez be afther payin' me the bit av a schore I've got agin ye?"

Mr. BUMSTEAD opens his eyes reproachfully, and wishes to know how she can dare talk about money matters to an organist who, at almost any moment, may be obliged to see a Chinaman hired in his place on account of cheapness?

"Could the haythen crayture play, thin?" she asks, wonderingly.

"Thairvairimitative," he tells her;—"Cookwashiron' n' eatbirdsnests."

"An' vote would they, honey?"

"Yesh—'f course—thairvairimitative, I tell y'," snarls he: "do'tcheapzdirt."

"Is it vote chaper they would, the haythen naygurs, than daycint, hardworkin' white min?" she asks, excitedly.

"Yesh. Chinesecheaplabor," he says, bitterly.

"Och, hone!" cries the woman, in anguish; "and f'hat's the poor to do then, honey?"

"Gowest; go'nfarm!" sobs Mr. BUMSTEAD, shedding tears. "I'd go m'self if a-hadn't lost dear-er-rerelative.—Nephew'n' umbrella."

"Saint PAYTHER! an' f'hat's that?"

"EDWINS!" cries the unhappy organist, starting to his feet with a wild reel. "Th' pride of'suncle'sheart! I see 'm now, in'sh'fectionatemanhood, with whalebone ribs, made 'f alpaca, andyetsoyoung. 'Help me!' hiccries; 'PENDRAGON'sash'nate'n me!' hiccries—and I go!"

While uttering this extraordinary burst of feeling, he has advanced towards the door in a kind of demoniac can-can, and, at its close, abruptly darts into the street and frantically makes off.

"The cross of the holy fathers!" ejaculates the woman, momentarily bewildered by this sudden termination of the scene. Then a new expression comes swiftly over her face, and she adds, in a different tone, "Odether-nodether, but it's coonin' as a fox he is, and it's off he's gone again widout payin' me the schore! Sure, but I'll follow him, if it's to the wurruld's ind, and see f'hat he is and where he is."

Thus it happens that she reaches Bumsteadville almost as soon as the Ritualistic organist, and, following him to his boarding-house, encounters Mr. TRACEY CLEWS upon the steps.

"Well, now!" calls that gentleman, as she looks inquiringly at him, "who do you want?"

"Him as just passed in, your Honor."

"Mr. BUMSTEAD?"

"Ah. Where does he play the organ?"

"In St. Cow's Church, down yonder. Mass at seven o'clock, and he'll be there in half an hour."

"It's there I'll be, thin," mumbles the woman; "and bad luck to it that I didn't know before; whin I came to ax him for me schore, and might have gone home widout a cint but for a good lad named EDDY who gave me a sthamp.—The same EDDY, I'm thinkin', that I've heard him mutter about in his shlape at my shebang in town, whin he came there on political business."

After a start and a pause, Mr. CLEWS repeats his information concerning the Ritualistic church, and then cautiously follows the woman as she goes thither.

Unconscious of the remarkable female figure intently watching him from under a corner of the gallery, and occasionally shaking a fist at him, Mr. BUMSTEAD attends to the musical part of the service with as much artistic accuracy as a hasty head-bath and a glass of soda-water are capable of securing. The worshippers are too busy with risings, kneelings, bowings, and miscellaneous devout gymnastics, to heed his casual imperfections, and his headache makes him fiercely indifferent to what any one else may think.

Coming out of the athletic edifice, Mr. CLEWS comes upon the woman again, who seems excited.

"Well?" he says.

"Sure he saw me in time to shlip out of a back dure," she returns, savagely; "but it's shtrait to his boording-house I'm going afther him, the spalpeen."

Again Mr. TRACEY CLEWS follows her; but this time he allows her to go up to Mr. BUMSTEAD'S room, while he turns into his own apartment where his breakfast awaits him. "I can make a chalk mark for the trail I've struck to-day," he says; and then thoughtfully attacks the meal upon the table.^[2]

(To be Continued.)

[2]      At this point, the English original of this Adaptation—the "Mystery of EDWIN DROOD"—breaks off forever.

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

ilsson has come; and, sad to say, has brought dissension and discord with her. Not that there is any discord in her matchless voice, but there is a vast amount of wrangling as to her precise merits. Do you doubt this? Then come with me in my light Fourth Avenue car, while the stars are bright and the sky is blue, (this is an adaptation of a once popular love-song by Dr. WATTS,) and we will go to Steinway Hall to hear the Improved Swedish Nightingale, and feast our eyes on STRAKOSCH'S flowers.

We pass up the steep staircase—with many misgivings as to our ankles, if we belong to the sex which considers the possession of those anatomical features a fact to be carefully concealed, provided they are not symmetrical. We pass the door-keeper, who, as is the custom of his kind, frowns malignantly at us, and evidently asks himself—"How much longer can I refrain from tearing up the tickets of these impudent pleasure-seekers, and throwing the pieces in their infamously contented countenances?" We gain the hall, and are sent to the inevitable "other aisle," by the usher, (by the way, why is it that one always gets into the wrong aisle, only to be ignominiously ordered to the opposite side of the house?) and we finally turn various illegal occupants out of our seats, and begin to fan ourselves in fervid anticipation of the coming musical treat. A buzz of conversation is everywhere going on. Did any one ever notice the curious fact that a middle-aged man and woman can converse at a theatre or concert room without either one finding any difficulty in hearing what the other says, while no young man can make his accompanying young lady hear a single word unless his mouth is in close proximity to her ear? This singular state of things is doubtless due to the peculiar acoustical properties of public buildings. We manage, however, to hear a good deal of both young and middle-aged conversation, of the following improving type.

RURAL PERSON. "I've heard most everybody that's sung in our Philadelphy opera house, and some of 'em are pretty hard to beat. NILSSON may beat 'em, you know. Mind, now, I don't say she won't, but she's got a mighty hard row to hoe."

CRITIC. (Who sent for seats for his eight sisters and their friends—but who did not get them.) "There comes the Scandinavian Society—fifty Irishmen at fifty cents a head. Did you see the flowers piled up in the lobby? MAX paid seven hundred dollars for the lot."

YOUNG MAN. "Dearest! I wish you wouldn't look at that fellow across the way. You