Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-03-19

LIFE IN THE METRoPoLIs--A GLANCE AT A
| SINGLE SoUARE.-There are few persons, even
among those who have long resided in me-
tropolis, who have even a slight idea of the
variety to be found within its limits. Life is
not always what it seems; and where thou
| sands OF persons are congregated in a circle
| whose radius does not measure even more
than n mile or two, the stateliest piles are
| often made the abodes of guilt, and what is
| admirable when gazed upon from without is
sometimes soul-sickening when the interior
| is seen.
| Any Imagination can picture great city,
| with its broad and fashionable streets,
crowded with men and women whom bust
| ness and pleasure hurry along its sidewalks;
its parks elegantly laid out, beautifully plan,
ned and adorned with trees, and fountains
and flowers its splendid mansions, where
luxury, ease and content seem to find Para
disaical dwelling-places; its filthy ALLEYS,
where penury, crime and wretchedness find
homes; its splendid churches and brilliantly
lighted brothels; its stores and saloons
hotels and amusements; but after all, this is
but an outline and the reality will disappoint
even the faintest imaginings.
Pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty,
virtue and vice, youth and age, intellect and
idiocy, beauty and ugliness, health and dis
ease, life and death, walk side by side in the
same thoroughfare, ioste each other in the
same crowd, shake hands in the same draw
ing-room, and yet the observer has seen but
a little Of this "many-sided one" In an
eternity man would not learn his own posi-
bilities in the age of the planet he could not
become acquainted with metropolis.
A glance at q single square in this city
will suggest thought in regard to what is
compressed within the few square miles upon
which it is built 1t is not the largest one
either, and we doubt not others could be
found with peculiarities equally striking.
The heart of man proposes, the intellect finds
out the method, and the body executes the
designs, and whether we find the index in
the occupation, in the private act, or in the
social relation of the individual, rightly and
nearly seen, it is always true and points in
eyitably to his inner life and character.
These external signs are sufficient to show
men their own natures, at least in part, and
thus open the mental eye to the inward
prompting.
The square to which we refer, contains a
church, and to follow the street up one side
and down the other, presents the following
picture; Next to the church is drugstore,
then Gambling-hell, then II pair of massive
private residences, then the office of "a dentist,
then school-house, then machne-shop
then a trio of private houses, then one Of the
most notorious bagnios in the city, then an
Italian confectionery establishment, then the
business-place of a manufacturer of mathe-
matical instruments; opposite this is a drug
store, and in the same building another
bagnio, next to this Il pair of tenth-rate
boardlng-houses, upon whose doors and win
dow-sills may be found the unmstakable
hinger-marks of vulgarity, then couple of
dwelling-hOuses, then the rooms of an asso-
citation of Christians, with a library and read
ing-room, then few more dwellings, next to
these the office of a daily paper and lastly,
one of the finest private mansions in the city.
Within this little space are congregated
Christians and lsraelites, Caucasians and ne
merchants, wisdom and wickedness, refine
ment and proletrianism, and yet the locality
is not the least pleasant in the city, and the
neighborhood is quite as good as may be
found in the heart of any metropolis.