The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1852-05-13

veyiDg Southern ladys irst Impressions OF Inc
city of New York
Irvine HOUSE, New YoRK,
May 7, 1852.
think it is Mr. JEFFERSON, who says that
great cities are great excrescences on the body
polite At least, have feard this axiom at
tributed to him, and suppose no other states
man would be more likely 10 utter this senti-
ment Some other less distinguished, but prob
ably moro piously inclined philosopher has said,
that
Sod made the country,
| And man made the town."
And to my mind both declarations are true to
their fullest extent. Let citizen OF the South
for example, of Southern plantation, or a
Southern village, or interior town, whose life
has been spent in the South, whose traditions,
associations, ideas, attachments and recollectons
are all Of the sunny South'--et a Southern
lady especially, thus wholly identified with the
South come and reside here for several months
as your friend has done, and the wish to leave
this boisterous Baby lon, and to return home
ward again, will become the fixed and ruling
thought, Notwithstanding the approach of the
fashionable season, and the health, gayety, and
| Southern society which will soon be attracting
| the beau monde to the Northern springs.
New York is great caravanserai, sort OF
San Francisco on grand and permanent scale.
1t is not Southern city nor Northern city, il
is hardly an American city,-t is cosmopoli-
tan city--a city of all nations, living together
by common consent, under the Constitution and
laws Of the United States, the State and the
corporation, and protected by body of nine
hundred policemen. Walk along Broadway,
and the multitudes of French, Irish, Germans,
Italians and Jews from every nation under the
sun, that throng the sidewalks, are calculated
to excite your apprehensions of our political
safety Aud when you hear of the landing OF
from three to five thousand emigran!s n day,
and meet detachments Of them daily upon the
streets in all the roughhess of semi-barbarian-
ism and European poverty, you cannot help
feeling some alarm lest the capacity Of our in
stitutons to regenerate and assmate these
crude materials with our people, should be test
ed beyond their strength. And it is enough to
make the heart bleed to see the numbers Of dis
tressed creatures, men, women and children, OF
all imaginable types and shades and combina-
tions, that haunt, like CHASTITY spectres, the most
conspicuous places OF the principal streets.
| They are the debris from overpopuated Europe,
resuming their old vocation under the better
auspices of this new field of enterprise
In word, this crowded Babel of five hundred
thousand people, of all nations, in which the
American appears only as the eavening ele.
ment Of the mass--in this thickly swarming
hive, where all individuality, all society, all
fixed associations Of home, and friends, and
neighbors, and life itself, are swallowed up in n
confusion Of tongues, and in such desp srate
scramble for money, az the world has never
seen--this crowded Babel is no place for such
as You and ]. With the opening summer it
may be agreeable enough to leave the quiet of
the Southern country, and spend few days in
New York, shopping, and seeing the sights OF
the town and suburbs, and the amusements If
the theatres, on the way to Saratoga or Mag
ara; but to come here to reside here, and to
attempt to identify yourself with New York as
New Yorker is solitude more dreadful to
contemplate than the solitude Of the black veil.
New York is a place to make money n place
to speud money in, a charming place for few
days sojourn, place for the study of the splend
ors of these merchant princes, in their superb
palaces of Union square, and Fifth avenue; and
for the exercise of charity in the relief of endless
destitution and wretclledness; place abound
ing in good people and good institutions, and
swarmng with crime and degradation but it is
no place for you or |. Madame de Srae was
miserable out OF Paris but we can BE- happier
out of New York ] see it stated in the news
papers, that while the average population OF
London is seven people to each house, the aver
age of New York is thrteen and the pressure
for room is so great that the rent of cellar for
year, am told is equal to the price of a nice
little house in any of the interior towns of the
South But enough of all this Let us turn to
tte brighter side of the picture.
Broadway--but for the dust when the sun
shines, and the mud when il rains, aud but fol
the danger Of the omnibusses, and the crowds
Of all nations, many of them smoking the most
odious pipes and cigars but for these things
Broadway is still the paramount attraction to a
stranger in New York. We must do our shop
ing, and Broadway is the place of all places for
that. Stewards Il Reck's for dry goods is pro-
verbal and when, us it appears, in the single
article of gloves the sales at Stewards last
year amounted to 100000, you may form some
goods, wholesale and retail. Then there is Bull
fms mantilla emporium and variety of other
stores, devoted to particular classes of goods
and at most Of which there is very fair margin
left for little jewing. But competition is great
and such isit is said, the quantity goods in the
| city Of all kinds, and the desire of the mer.
chants TO sell off, that there was never a better
opportunity for profitable purchases by whole
sale. BY retail, know that good bargains can
| be made, through the aid Of an experienced New
| York lady as pilot
But the jewel Of all Broadway, is Genin's la
dies and juveriles' bazaar. 1t is the same Genin
who immortalized himself, and made his fortune
as a halter, in the purchase of the first Jenny
| Lind ticket sold in the United States, for which
he paid SS225-it is the same Genin whose do
nation of thousand dollars to Kossuth, Sc
cured him the sale of several thousand dollars
worth of Kossuth hats. Genin is scarcely sec.
ond to Barnum as genius in his line. This
ladies' and Juveniles bazaar, IL, indeed, the
| browning triumph Of his taste and enterprise. 1t
is one of the fine store rooms of the marble
fronted St Nicholas hotel. 1t is fitted up in the
light and bright, and graceful style of a fairy
palace.
| The goods consist of ladies' hats, shoes, slip
pers, gloves parasols riding whips, and so forth /;
and of Juveniles clothing for both sexes, from
top to toe, of the most exquisite importatiops
from London and Paris. These various articles
are tastefully arranged in upright glass cases
around the sides of the room, and at intervals
| over the floor and all around overhead little