Year: 1878

SIGHT ON BOND STREET-THE DEADLY


DIME NovEL-BLooDTHIRs YOUNG


FREEBooTERs.


New YORK, June Ia, 1873.


To the Editor of the CdledOnidn


Although the sad event has been
postponed longer than was generally
expected Mr.. William Cullen Bryant's
death early on the morning of Wednes-
day the 18th, has justified the brief
obituary contained in my letter of two
weeks since. The decease of hardly
any public man in this country could
have elected such a unanimous and
spontaneous tribute to his memory and
achievement as that which has filled
the press since the news of the aged
poets departure. The city flags were
even half-masted and the whole city
seemed to unite in testifying to the
universal respect felt for one of the
most upright and blameless of men.


Mr.. Bryant's career was an excep-
toinal one. A precocious genius, famous
when he entered his teens, and doing
his best work before he was out of
them, he still preserved his high fame
through nearly two thirds of century
thereafter. Although as his partners
confess, he was not business man, still
he accumulated a large fortune and
maintained it to the end with great
frugality. Although slight and rather
delicate of frame, his abundant exercise
and regular habits kept him in the con-
dition and health of an athlete and this
almost up to the week of his death. At
seventy-five he astonished a friend
while walking with him in the grounds
of his country residence on Long Island,
by running a short distance in advance,
jumping easily into the branches of an
overhanging tree and swinging for some
time by one hand. When in the CITY
he walked up and down town every
day, rain or shine, and was always one
of the most conspicuous figures on the
street. The last time | saw Mr.. BRYANT
was one morning not many weeks ago
us he was coming down Broadway to
his office as usual. His pace was of
course not rapid, but in his step were
much of the tirmness and agility of
youth. His sharp blue eyes looked out
undimmed from beneath pair of bushy
brOws, as snsw white as the long full
beard and silky hair framing the strong
features with which his portraits have
tamiliaIiZed us, and his whole aspect
was so strikingly and attractively ven
cradle that most of the passers-by in
voluntarily turned to look after him as
he went.


Your readers are probably aware that
pretty nearly everything is to be found
i'll one shape or another in this city of
New York but | venture to say that IL
majority of them would really be sur
prised to hear that there is a regular
gold mine i'll operation in the very heart
of the town. Such however, is the fact,
and any one curious to inspect the
mode and processes by which great
proportion of the precious metal has
been got out of the soil of the Pacific
slope, can have this curiosity gratified
without going further West than the
corner OF Broadway and Bond street.
Here, year and a half ago, occurred
the great fire in which IL cluster of
Jewelry and silver manufactures were
burned. In these buildings at the time
of the fire there must have been, out
side of the dozen safes which were af-
forwards recovered, nearly two hundred
thousaud dollars worth of the precious
metals, only small portion of which
was Immediately. recovered. The re-
mainder was scattered, in broken and
blackened fragments, through the eigh-
teen hundred tons of charred rubbish
which lay piled in the cellars of the
burned buildings when the smouldering
fires were at last extinguished. During
the first few months after the catas-
trophe the surface of this rubbish was a
good deal picked over bv the street
urchins and quite good deal taken
out. Recently, two experienced miners
obtained the necessary permission from
Messrs. Robbins and Appleton, the
owners of the building, to work the
great ash heap Systematically. They
put in thousand dollars worth of ma
chinery and have now been delving,
sluicing and cradling in true miner
fashion for several weeks. The two
men are able to wash about thirty tons
OF the rubbish day, and thus far re-
port it to pan out about eleven dollars
ton. During the most of the day the
work of the grimy pair thirty feet be-
low the side walk is watched by crowd
OF idlers and stragglers who look down
upon the strange scene with eager and
envious curiosity.


10 abolish the dime novel would
probably seem to the average Young
American more serious and revolu-
tlOnary invasion of rights than the sus-
pension of the habeas corpus; and yet it
may have to be done. Within a short
time there have been quite a number of
cases reported in which boys who had
been reading about scouts and pirates
until they became convinced that they
had a special mission to become one or
the other have in consequence got
themselves into scrapes of various di-
mensions. Half dozen or more of
these infant adventurers have, within
as many months, been intercepted by
the police on their way either to the
lava beds or the roaring main and re-
turned to homes in this city and Brook
lyn from which they had run away with
the firm intentention of achieving des-
perate and heroic deeds. Most of them,
when thus found, had no possessions in
the way OF baggage or money but in
not one of the cases reported was the
prime necessity, revolver, missing.
In none OF the instances above alluded
to however was any more serious dam
age accomplished than the alarm of the
parents concerned and some unromautic
retrlbqtion wreaked by the said parents
In such manner that the young des-