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Even a woman's gossiping genius cannot compete with the lightning. But I may sometimes touch upon matters and things not usually manipulated by the electric "operators" for the "Associated Press." In this cosmopolitan, labyrinthine city, there are thousands of "interior views"-the parlors of the rich and the hovels of the poor-wherein we must look to find the virtues and the vices, the joys and the sorrows, the struggles and the achievements, the failures and the successes, which make up that mysterious sum-total of what is called life in NewYork.

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And there is a great deal of life (and death, too,) in this throbbing ganglion of humanity—this surging, troubled sea, whose waters cannot rest. sified by numbers, and excited by friction, we feel the moral and immoral magnetism of the multitude, sparkling and glowing in the very atmosphere we breathe. We become charged and surcharged with a sort of external vitality, which makes us think quick, move quick, live quick, and die quick. We have here in New-York the best and the worst of everything. Our virtues and vices run to extremes (not unfrequently meeting). Our Christians are saints; and our sinners are fiends. It must needs be in such a perpetual scene of temptation, beset and besieged by

"the world, the flesh, and the devil." The "temptations" we read of are tame in comparison to those we encounter here in our "daily walk and conversation." What enchanting vices, what seductive luxuries, what beautiful extravagancies are wooing us to ruin at every turn! Those laces at Stewart's, those jewels at Tiffany's, those bonnets at Ferrero's, and those intoxicating suppers (for two) at Malliard's! Can all these fascinations be resisted?

It is one of the severe blessings of these "hard times" (the jewel in the toad's head), that they afford not a little aid to one's moral resolutions. They have brought reflection to the thoughtless; economy to the extravagant; and even quiet, fireside happiness to many who have long lived in a whirl of outside excitements. I know it is said that the unwonted stringency of the money market is likely to bear hard against matrimony; and that Brown, the ubiquitous undertaker, has received orders to postpone all fashionable weddings, and even to curtail the expenses of his aristocratic funerals.

Many a man has failed, and gone home sadly dejected, with his face as long and as blue as an old fashioned grave-stone; and when the anxious wife has asked, "What's the matter?" as she found him moping in the library, has received the reply: "We

are ruined; all is lost; house, furniture, carriages, horses-all must go!" (He had neglected to settle all these little properties on his wife-the present popular preliminary to a "suspension.") "They must all go," he continued; "there is nothing left but poverty and misery!"

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I verily believe cousin Lou-Lou is my beauspends more money at Bininger's for wines and cigars than an economical woman like me would require to support a "growing family;" and I hope this hint will not be lost upon him and his extravagant and selfish club associates. But I am afraid his heart is turning to marble; for he goes to the "Dusseldorf Gallery" every evening-so he says-and gazes at the cold beauty of the "Greek Slave," which he hopes to win in the coming distribution of the "Cosmopolitan Art Association." He says he has invested $3, for which he receives a $2 Art Journal for one year, and a $5 engraving, called "Manifest Destiny," representing three beautiful young girls engaged in fortune telling. He has dreamed that he holds the lucky certificate, and already talks with most provoking fondness of his marble bride, who will be as contented in a cottage as in a palace; whose charms will never wither, and who will be entirely satisfied with "Nothing to Wear," forever. Aggravating cousin Lou!

I went last night to see the famous "Ronzani Ballet Company" at the Broadway. I believe it is Carlyle who calls the ballet a bevy of thin damsels, spinning around in bare arms and muslin saucers. But notwithstanding the Ronzani girls looked like open umbrellas with two pink handles, the dancing was perfectly charming. Lamoreux is better than Ellsler, so light, so graceful, and so feathery in her movements. It is music addressed to the eye; and if she could only dance on the keys of a pianoforte, her toes would play the liveliest tune, in perfect time, without missing a single note, or "shake." The house was crowded, the applause vociferous.

Now, I am tired, and so are you; and yet I haven't come to what I meant to write. As I cannot squeeze it into a postscript (as most women can all that they really have to say), I'll keep what's left until I "come again."

LETTER No. II.

NEW-YORK, Oct. 29, 1857.

MY DEAR

ARE you prepared to wage an eternal war against the Commercial "Credit System"--the fatal Upas

tree that overshadows the land, and whose deadly fruits are the pestilence that is upon us? If so, give us your hand, and I will go with you, and a regenerated people will go with you, until the honest maxim, "Pay as you go," shall prevail through the world. We are approaching the twentieth century of the Christian era, and men are flattering themselves that in morals, manners, and mercantile matters, they are obeying the precepts and imitating the example of the author of the Sermon on the Mount! Did Jesus of Nazareth ever run in debt? We profess a great admiration for the learned, zealous, and eloquent Paul--the Webster of the Apostles. Did he not proclaim that great doctrine of universal salvation" Owe no man anything!" We love to laud the worldly wisdom that fell like honey from the lips of Shakspeare. And has he not left us that golden motto, worthy to be engraved upon the door of every counting-room in the land, and blazoned upon the banners of nations-"Neither a borrower nor a lender be?" Who that reads these words may not trace the keenest sufferings of his life to that horrible monster-Debt, which is now pressing like a nightmare upon the agonized bosoms of millions of strong men; aye, and of gentle women too! And is not the credit system the primal, the sole cause of this stupendous misery? Why is Wall-street to-day

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