1832. IN this year the following streets and places were widened, viz.: Ann, between Nassau and William; Cedar, between William and Pearl; Exchange Place at William; Spruce, between Nassau and Gold; William, on east side, from Wall to Pine; Hanover at Exchange Place; and Cross, Anthony, and Little Water streets. Sixth Street was changed to Waverly Place. Jefferson Market, at intersection of Sixth Avenue and Greenwich Lane, was opened. There was annexed to it a fire­alarm bell tower and a steam­pump, which drew and forced water through a main to the elevated cistern or reservoir, as it was termed, in East Thirteenth Street near Broadway.

Union Square was enlarged, and as the required area invaded the property of the owners abutting in Broadway and Seventeenth Street and the Bowery (now Fourth Avenue), many of them protested against the measure with the usual vehemence and short­sightedness of people regarding their view of their own interests in similar cases.

1 was present on an occasion when an old and well known sailor captain protested against the enlargement, as he was an old man and had settled down for life and did not wish to be disturbed. He said that it would be hard to lose his property-that is, to have the city take about five per cent. of it and make the balance in a few years worth ten times the cost of the whole, which it did.

The Hall of Records, in the Park, originally built for a jail (see page 26), which in 1830 had been ordered to be converted for the accommodation of several of the city departments, was so far finished in this year that it was used as a cholera hospital, and, subsequently, by the Register, Comptroller, Street Commissioner, and Surrogate.

Some prices for real estate, obtained at sales by public auction during this winter, are here noted: The corner of Wall and Broad streets, 30 feet on Wall Street by 16 feet 8 inches on Broad, $17,750; south­west corner of Broadway and Park Place, about 25 by 122, $37,000.

February 23 ground was broken for construction of the New York and Harlem Railroad, and in the course of the year this company ran its first car from Prince to Fourteenth Street. These cars were like stage­coaches, hung on leather, with several compartments and side doors, the driver sitting above like a coachman, and putting on the brake with his feet. My readers should remember that at this time railways on important lines, as from Schenectady to Saratoga and the short cut across the Delaware­Maryland peninsula, on the route to Washington, were operated by horse­power.

Mordecai M. Noah, who had edited and published The Advocate from 1813, then at 73 Pine Street, commenced the publication in 1825 of the National Advocate, at 45 Wall Street, but, being enjoined by Henry Eckford and others, he changed the title to Noah's National Advocate; being again enjoined, he changed it to the New York Enquirer, at 10 William Street, and, in 1829, James Watson Webb purchased it, merged it with the Morning Courier published in 1827, and established the New York Courier and Enquirer at 16 Merchants' Exchange, with M. M. Noah, James Lawson, James Gordon Bennett, Prosper M. Wetmore, and James G. Brooks as editors. Later Bennett was transferred to Washington as reporter of Congressional proceedings.

May 4 the outer walls of the stores of Phelps & Peck in Gold Street, corner of Fulton, at about 6 P. M., fell out, and eight persons, including the bookkeeper, were killed and five injured.

May 21 Washington Irving arrived in New York, after an absence of seventeen years in foreign parts, and on May 30 a public dinner was given to him at the City Hotel, which was attended by a very large and distinguished company.

June 8 a public meeting of merchants was held to endorse an appeal to Congress to modify the tariff laws; but, in consequence of the presence and violent action of the manufacturers and others opposed to any modification, the assemblage was dispersed.

This was "cholera year." During the spring the public were alarmed by reported prevalence of the disease in Europe. June 15, from Albany via the day­boat, we learned of the existence of the dreaded cholera in Quebec, brought across the Atlantic by immigrants, and appearing in a virulent form. The Common Council appointed two physicians, Drs. Rhinelander and DeKay, to proceed forthwith to Quebec and report their views as to the means to be adopted to alleviate the scourge so soon as it appeared here. They proceeded and soon returned, and among their remedial preventive recommendations, one cited brandy and water and the other port­wine. It was for a long while a standard and oft recurring joke with those who availed themselves, in the manner of such refreshment, of every opportunity that was presented to repel the dreaded cholera, announcing their preference for "Dr. Rhinelander " (brandy) or "Dr. DeKay " (port­wine).

Mayor Bowne issued a proclamation forbidding the arrival here of all conveyances with persons afflicted with cholera. In the churches prayers were offered; but on June 26 the cholera appeared in New York. It was in virulent form. The Board of Health was required by duty to visit the Staten Island quarantine, and within a fortnight from the time of their visit all of them save one (Alderman Hall) were dead of the epidemic. A coroner's inquest was held in the case of a man found dead in the street from cholera. This was late in the week, and by the next Monday nine of the twenty persons concerned in the inquest were dead. A special medical council was appointed, and five large public hospitals were organized, besides establishing a special station in each ward.

Nevertheless, the city manifested a degree of calmness and self­control, in actual presence of the disorder, that was somewhat remarkable. Business proceeded without noteworthy interruptions, and the streets wore their usual animated aspect. The situation was serious and grave-even awful-but there was no wild terror. Yet the disease raged until October 31, and caused 3515 deaths.

In the middle of July the famous Ravels appeared first in America at the Park Theatre, and instantly gained a popularity almost unrivalled in our amusements, which lasted for more than thirty years. After being at the Park and the "Bowery," they were seen at Niblo's for many successive seasons. Gabriel Ravel's farewell benefit was at Palmo's Opera House, late in 1847, and soon after the principal members of the troupe went abroad, but, at the opening of Niblo's new theatre, in 1849, several of them appeared, and in 1851 Gabriel himself returned with undiminished powers. In 1857­58 they were at Niblo's for three hundred nights. The first engagement of them at the Park, in this year of 1832, lasted but a fortnight, being negatived by the cholera.

September 3 arrived Charles Kemble and his daughter, Frances Anne, so long and well known in this country as Fanny Kemble Butler. On September 17 and 18 they made their first appearances at the Park Theatre, Kemble on the first evening in Hamlet, his daughter on the I8th as Bianca in Milman's "Fazio." The receipts for the first ten nights of the Kembles' performances averaged twelve hundred dollars, and the total for the engagement of sixty nights was fifty­six thousand dollars. They attracted great attention, not only at the theatre, but in society also, for they were received into some of the best houses. Miss Kemble, in particular, was veritably triumphant. The publication of her journal, however, in 1835, caused a considerable revulsion of feeling among some of those who had shown her the greatest courtesy, for she had set down therein, with great frankness, her opinions of the dress, manners, and habits of her hosts- the opinions of a young girl in a new country, not intrinsically valuable and certainly ill­advised as to publication.

The passage of a steamboat hence to Providence having been made in fourteen hours and twenty­nine minutes, it was heralded as an exceptional performance.

October 31. A notable event was the consecration of four bishops (Hopkins, Smith, McIlvaine, and Doane) in St. Paul's Chapel. The occasion excited great interest; it is now, 1895, commemorated on one of the bronze doors (the South) of Trinity Church.

Early in November T. D. Rice made his Ethiopian debut in his character of Jim Crow, which became famous. Negro delineations had been given before (as at the Chatham Garden), but Rice may be regarded as in some degree the founder.

In December the Camden and Amboy Railroad was opened complete (steamboat to South Amboy and thence by rail), and the time was exultingly announced as five and a half hours from New York to Philadelphia.

The writer suggested to his former employer, James P. Allaire, the steam­engine manufacturer, that, as work was light, it would be well to keep all his good men and build a tugboat, which he might employ profitably if he could not sell her. To which he replied: "Why, Charles, there are three now!" This was considered conclusive; three boats, how could they be supported? At the present time (1895) there are 592 documented at this port, besides an unknown number from outside our limits.

Mr. Whitlock established a third line of packets hence to Havre. The first street paved in Harlem was One Hundred and Twenty­ninth Street in this year, paved and flagged, from Third to Eighth Avenue. There were no other paved streets in New York north of Clinton Place and Greenwich Avenue at this time.

Alexander Welsh, or "Sandie," as he was universally called, opened a restaurant under the Museum, at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, and named it the Terrapin Lunch. He was very popular, and his Lunch became one of the favorite resorts of the period. His motto was, Dum vivimus vivamus He was a worthy competitor of Windust.

There were exhibited in the Rotunda, Chambers Street, pictures of Adam and Eve, and as they were represented in a semi­nude condition, and the public had not been educated up to the point of considering such representation as within the requirements of propriety, much censure was lavished upon the exhibition, and as a result it was largely attended, and finally accepted by some, and submitted to by others as permissible.

Charles Cox, a tailor from London at 114 William Street, subsequently Nassau, then at 5 Wall and finally Astor House, as Cox & Knock, had published an advertisement of an exceptionally absurd character, setting forth his lachrymose condition after his arrival here, and his now jubilant position. The precise language I have forgotten, but it was of such an unusual form that an English writer who was travelling here reproduced it on his return, in his travels in America, and vauntingly cited it as an illustration of the peculiar advertisements of Yankee tradesmen.

William Harrington, a butcher of Central Market, without any training, fought and signally defeated an English pugilist near Philadelphia. The interest shown in this fight among the butchers and Bowery Boys, of which number "Bill" Harrington had been an acknowledged representative and leader, was very great, and when the result of it became known here, flags were hoisted on the markets and slaughter­houses.

The Bowery Boy of that period was so distinctive a class in dress and conversation, that a description of him is well worthy of notice. He was not an idler and corner lounger, but mostly an apprentice, generally to a butcher, and he " ran with a machine." He was but little seen in the day, being engaged at his employment; but in the evenings, other than Saturdays (when the markets remained open all day and evening), and on Sundays and holidays, he appeared in propria persona, a very different character; his dress, a high beaver hat, with the nap divided and brushed in opposite directions, the hair on the back of his head clipped close, while in front the temple locks were curled and greased (hence, the well­known term of " soap locks " to the wearer of them), a smooth face, a gaudy silk neckcloth, black frock­coat, full pantaloons, turned up at the bottom over heavy boots designed for service in slaughterhouses and at fires; and when thus equipped, with his girl hanging on his arm, it would have been very injudicious to offer him any obstruction or to utter an offensive remark.

When he advised one of his confreres to attack anti beat a person, or defend himself, he would exclaim "Lam him" (Sam, Jim, or Jake, as the name might be). The orthography I am not responsible for, as, in the absence of any vocabulary, I give the word phonographically; and strange as the expression may seem, there is authority for it, as Walter Scott, in his "Peveril of the Peak," uses it thus: "Lambe them, lads; lambe them!" *
       * A cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head in Charles I's time.

Colloquially the Bowery Boy was referred to as Moze, and his "best girl" as Lize.

1833. January I appeared the first number of the Knickerbocker Magazine, under the editorial control of Charles F. Hoffman, a periodical which continued to hold the field, mainly under the late Lewis Gaylord Clark, until a date beyond the scope of these reminiscences. The New York Evangelist was founded in this year.

In this year the New York and Harlem Railroad extended its route to Murray Hill.

Provost Street, which ran from Chapel Street to the river, was changed to Franklin Street. Asylum Street, which had been opened in 1832, to Cornelia, from Christopher, was opened from Sixth to Eighth Avenue to Fourth Street; and in November, North Street, which was east of the Bowery,was changed to Houston Street; Pine, from Broadway to William, was widened; Wooster was extended to Fourteenth Street, and Barrow from Asylum Street to Sixth Avenue.

Jacob S. Platt purchased sufficient property between Gold and Pearl streets to open a street and erect stores fronting thereon. Hence arose the name Platt Street.

It was about this year that the first block, or Belgian, pavement was laid in a street of this city or country. The location, selected in view of the heavy travel over it, was in the Bowery between Bayard and Walker (Pump) streets. The streets previous to this, and for many years after, were paved with what are professionally known as cobblestones; and it was not until about this year, with the exception of the instance cited, that block stones were introduced, and then but sparingly; Broadway being first paved with Russ block, which ultimately proved a failure and was removed for Belgian.

The Greenwich Savings Bank was opened at 12 Carmine Street.

In April a subscription was completed for building the Marine Pavilion at Rockaway, as an elegant place of summer resort. Some seventy gentlemen subscribed five hundred dollars each; the list including such names as Prime, Ray, King, Hone, Cruger, Howland, Suffern, Coster, Hoyt, Schermerhorn, Crosby, Whitney, Newbold, Gihon, Parish, Thorne, Grinnell, Suydam, Kissam, Heckscher, Cutting, Livingston, Stuyvesant, etc., but notwithstanding these names, and the expectations of success, this resort, though established according to the plan and being a delightful place, never prospered. New Yorkers of fashion, including most of the subscribers, preferred to "go farther and fare worse."

The City Hotel was much damaged by fire.

April 30 the stables of Kipp & Brown, proprietors of a line of stages to Wall Street, in Hudson Street, corner of Hammond, were burned, and a great number of horses and of new stages were destroyed.

June 3 died Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury under Washington, afterward a merchant of New York, and President, first of the Merchants' Bank, then of the Bank of America. After declining business he removed to Connecticut, of which State he was some time Governor, and then returned to New York.

June 29 died Colonel Nicholas Fish, much regretted, an officer of distinction in the Revolutionary War, and a highly esteemed citizen.

In the summer President Jackson visited the city at the invitation of the Common Council. He was received by it at Amboy, and escorted to the city in the steamboat North America, to Castle Garden. The number of people on the bridge was so great that one span of it fell, and many people were thrown into the water. I was at the point of rupture, and went with the bridge, but escaped uninjured.

July 3 Aaron Burr married the widow of Stephen Jumel, and subsequently occupied her fine old house (the Roger Morris home, built in 1758) that still stands untouched on the height overlooking Harlem River, just at the edge of the Croton Aqueduct, at about One Hundred and Sixty­first Street (see page 278).

August 1, Sailors' Snug Harbor, on Staten Island, was opened, the corner­stone having been laid in October, 1831.

At the end of August Tyrone Power made his first appearance in America, at the Park Theatre. Power certainly eclipsed all actors, earlier or later, as a delineator of Irish characters. He was here again in 1836 and 1839, and sailed for England on March 21, 1841, in the ill­fated President, which never was heard of afterward.

September 3, The Sun, the first one­cent paper, edited by Benjamin H. Day, began publication, and was sold by the first newsboy. It did not give editorials or reports of stock sales.

In January, Horace Greeley, in partnership with H. D. Shephard and Francis V. Story, had published and issued a daily paper, The Morning Post, price one cent, which lingered and survived for a period of three weeks.

September 4 a deep impression was made upon our public by the first performances at the Park of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wood, who began a season of English opera. "Cinderella" was given on the opening night. Mr. Wood was a competent performer, and his wife had, added to great native talent, the power derived from long study, experience, and native beauty. They were here again in 1835­36, and 1840­41. During the second visit they were ill­affected by an unhappy stage difficulty, which, however, was forgotten on their later appearance.

October 1, lotteries in the State were abolished by an Act of the Legislature.

In this year Stephen Holt built the hotel on Fulton, corner of Pearl and Water streets, to which he gave his name (the house now called the United States); but having changed the entire order of his business, that is, from being the proprietor of a cheap restaurant to the requirements and prices of other hotels, he erred; and later the hotel passed out of his possession. He had been proprietor of a public­house which was burned out in 1814, and failed. Obtaining credit then for another house, corner of Water and Fulton streets, he some years after surprised the public by furnishing what were termed his shilling (12.5 cents) plates, consisting of best Fulton Market beef, or poultry, and potatoes. It was such an innovation upon existing practice and price, that, becoming popular, he reaped sufficient profits to pay off his debts, and commence the construction of the hotel that bore his name. The bed­coverings or quilts for the entire house were covered with "patch­work" made by Mrs. Holt.

In 1827 an Englishwoman, Mrs. Frances Trollope, arrived here, proceeded to Cincinnati and essayed a business there, which proved to be unprofitable. Disappointed and vexed, she published in I 1832 her "Domestic Life of the Americans"; a book in which she expressed herself in voluble vituperation of the common customs and manners of the residents of a town, which at that period was, alike to all newly occupied Western settlements, rude in converse and regardless of appearances. She wholly ignored the grandeur of the country and its evidences of a brilliant future, and when launched upon the sea of censure and ridicule she did not confine herself to the West, but declared not only our standard observances and moral character to be inferior to those of England, but, in religious propriety, to be even inferior to that of France. In illustration of our customs and manners she aired her spleen in setting forth the inexplicable indecency, when sitting in a chair, of putting our feet on a table; wearing our hats within doors, of offensive expectoration and ejecting saliva or tobacco juice without heed of the distance. Dickens, I think, put the observed limit at ten paces.

Now, although her criticisms and assertions were engendered in disappointment, national animosity, and revenge, they were essentially true, and however chagrined we were, we acknowledged them as such by essaying to correct our manners; as was afterward universally demonstrated whenever one in public fell within the range of her criticisms, as the cry of "Trollope! Trollope! Trollope !" was immediately vociferated. In illustration of the extent to which such action was practiced: at the Park Theatre on an evening when the house was exceptionally full, one of a party occupying a front seat in the centre of the auditorium, soon after the close of the first act, leisurely and inconsiderately turned his back to the stage and rested himself on the front enclosure of the box, whereupon "Trollope! Trollope! Trollope!" was shouted from several quarters, in which I joined; but so soon as it was apparent that the party was disposed to ignore the rebuke, the pit arose, some occupants of the boxes followed, and the performance was arrested. When the person, in sporting phrase, finally "threw up the sponge," the house gave three cheers, not in compliment to him who had caused the censure, but to itself for its success; and such for many years was the course in public on all similar occasions of evident impropriety or neglect of the accepted observances of society. So much for Mrs. Trollope's book, much talked of at the time. It gave pleasure to the English, but profit to us, however much we may have been annoyed by it at first. Mrs. Trollope was mother of two men of letters, Thomas Adolphus, and his better known brother Anthony, the novelist. Her "Domestic Life" has just been reprinted here, and may be commended to my readers as an interesting study for them.

October 3. A meeting in favor of immediate abolition of,slavery was called to be held in Clinton Hall (Beekman Street). A crowd assembled at the place to oppose it. Thereupon the permission that had been given to use the hall was withdrawn, and the crowd adjourned to Tammany Hall and passed resolutions disapproving the object of the proposed meeting.

October 9. The boiler of the steamboat New England, hence to Hartford, burst; fifteen persons being killed and twenty­six scalded and wounded.

James Fenimore Cooper arrived in New York on November 5 after long residence abroad.

An association known as the New York Opera company through the efforts of Lorenzo Da Ponte, constructed a theatre on the corner of Church and Leonard streets the first structure in New York designed for the representation of Italian operas, which was opened with area eclat on November 18, Rossini's "La Gazza Ladra" being chosen for the initial performance. The prices were boxes, $1.50; "sofa seats," $2.00; pit, $1.00; gallery, 75 cents. But the time was far too early for successful maintenance of an opera­house in New York (indeed the time has not yet arrived for that), and as the enterprise languished, it was abandoned, and in 1836 the place was opened for dramatic performances as the National Theatre. James H. Hackett leased and held it for a brief period. It was destroyed by fire in September, 1839, rebuilt and again destroyed in May, 1841.

The country market and fish­market at Washington Market was opened on December 16

I was present at the annual feast of the Krout Club, an organization of many years before, the Chief of which was known as the Grand Krout, and the secretary in the fall of the year announced that his august Chief had been seen to nod, by which he signified his consent to an assemblage of all Krouts. The exercises were announced to commence at 10 A. M., when the "smoked geese would parade," followed by sauerkraut, which signified that cards would be indulged in until dinner; preceding which the secretary read his annual report, which consisted of a humorous relation of what had occurred and what had not occurred. Stoneall's Hotel, in Fulton Street, was the usual place of meeting, the notice of which was the display of a cabbage head on a pole projected from a window. When the death of a member was announced he was said to have wilted.

In this year President Jackson caused the Government money in the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia, and its several branches, as at New York, Boston, etc., to be withdrawn and deposited in some State banks. The act was vigorously opposed and censured by the opposition press, and public meetings were held in various places for many months after, denouncing the measure; but inasmuch as the bank made a very disastrous failure soon after, the act of the President met with much less condemn, nation.

About this time a Mr. Xavier Chabert, who figured here as the "Fire­eater," and, being protected by asbestos clothes, would enter a heated oven and emerge with impunity, etc., etc., married the possessor of a life interest in the block bounded by Ninth and Tenth avenues, Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets. To the disgust of parties interested in the progress of Chelsea, she gave leases of the land which were limited by her life. It was held by the objecting parties in Chelsea that the presence of a block of low wooden buildings (many of which were, and were being transplanted, from other localities), cowsheds and stables, would seriously injure them; on the other hand it was asserted that upon death and reversion of the interest, all the encumbrances would be removed. The response was, "Never, so long as they existed,"- and with a few exceptions they yet remain.

This year saw the beginning of the Millerite "craze," which assumed considerable proportions during the ten years or more next succeeding; causing a good deal of talk and newspaper comment and unsettling many weak minds. William Miller, of Hampton, N. Y., believed or pretended that he had discovered from his study of Holy Scripture that the end of the world was near at hand, and prophesied Christ's second coming in the month of April, 1843. The new doctrine was promulgated by preaching and circulation of books and tracts, and secured adherents, many of whom, when the appointed time drew near, divested themselves of their property, as being of no further use to them, and prepared ascension robes, to be in readiness for the great day. Nothing unusual occurring at that time, it was asserted that some error in computation had been found, and that the true date was in October of the same year. A letter in the Troy Times of July, 1894, contains an account by the Rev. Professor Wentworth, then of the Troy Conference Academy, of a visit made by him to Miller on this date. Professor Wentworth says that, though it was the night set for the judgment and conflagration of the world, and the faithful were casting away their worldly goods in contempt of all things perishable, it was not so with Miller himself. "He believed," says Dr. Wentworth, "in the Scriptural injunction 'Occupy till I come,' and his fields were clean mown and reaped, his wood­house was full of wood, sawed and piled for winter's use; forty rods of new stone wall had been built that fall, and a drag stood ready with bowlders as a cargo to be laid upon the wall the next day."

Lydia Maria Child's caustic comment on the Millerites was that she had "heard of very few instances of stolen money restored, or falsehoods acknowledged, as a preparation for the dreaded event." Upon the failure of the second prophecy reasons for a new date were forthcoming, and again on March 22, 1844, the Millerites, clad in their ascension robes, gathered on hill­tops, looking vainly for the Coming in the East. It was a pathetic company, and much of the pathetic quality attended this delusion, in the course of which the more feeble minds became deranged, and not a few persons committed suicide.

During the years embraced in this recital, much discussion of the subject went on among people of a higher class than Miller's proselytes. Thus, the Rev. Dr. Beman of Troy, N. Y. (predecessor in his pastorale of the Rev. Professor Marvin R. Vincent, now of Union Theological Seminary), delivered a course of lectures on the "Second Coming of Christ," which showed some advanced views, though he disclaimed belief in Miller's Immediatism.

Miller outlived his reputation as a prophet, and the end of the world came for him in December, 1849. The Second Adventist sect, however, of which he was the real father, still survives as his monument, having attained the dignity of further sectism and subdivision within itself; some of its members having developed new views of the Trinity, while some retain orthodox opinions; some taking up the Seventh Day notion, while others observe Sunday, etc., etc.

Miller was of course the figure­head, but the brains were in the head of Joshua V. Himes, an early convert, who became the real organizer of the movement and provided and disseminated its literature. In after years when sect after sect appeared among the remaining adherents of Miller, Mr. Himes continued to be the leader of the more conservative. At the age of seventy­four he received Deacon's orders in the Episcopal Church, at the hands of Bishop Clarkson, and remained in the missionary charge then entrusted to him, and active therein until his death at ninety years, toward the close of 1895. It is a remarkable fact that the Millerite movement largely helped to prepare the way for the Episcopal Church, into which thousands came after "the time" had passed by. It made no converts from that church, but drew from the religious bodies in which the doctrines of the intermediate state, the Resurrection, and the second coming of Christ had been most ignored. The movement was, as has been well said, "the revenge of neglected eschatological truth."

October 13, at the fall meeting of the Jockey Club on Union Course, L.I., there were four entries for the four-mile heats, viz.: "Black Maria," by John C. Stevens; "Trifle," by John C. Craig; "Lady Relief," by E. A. Darcey; and "Slim," by Bela Badger and John C. Tillotson. "Black Maria" won the first heat; the second was declared dead between "BlackMaria" and "Trifle"; the third was won by "Trifle"; the fourth by "Lady Relief," and the fifth and last by "Black Maria." "Slim" was distanced in the second heat, and "Trifle" in the fifth. The times of the heats in minutes and seconds were 8.06, 7.55, 8.13, 8.39, and 8.47. The track was heavy from recent rains and the weather cloudy, dark, and cold. This was the first and only twenty­mile race that ever occurred, and with four horses it would occur only with the occurrence of three winning each a heat, and one dead heat. When this performance is compared with that of the Anglomaniac practices here of the present day, of three quarters, seven­eighths, and one and one­quarter mile flat races, the question of an improvement in the race­horses of this day, in all points, over those of half a century ago becomes very problematical.

In this year there was built at Baltimore by Williamson & Kennard, for William McKim, the bark Ann McKim, of 494 tons, having greater proportionate length to beam than was the practice, and finer ends, and, as a consequence, she was a faster sailer than the ordinary vessel of that or a preceding time. She, in fact, approached the construction of a half clipper.

The same party had had built in the squaretop­sail schooner Yellott, of two hundred tons. She was of the type of the world­wide­famed Baltimore clippers-long, low, and sharp, with raking masts and great rise of floor; which latter element made this type, from insufficient proportional freight capacity, to be suited only for slavers, privateers, opium smugglers, oyster and fruit bearers, etc. For general freight and long voyages they were unsuited, but for the specific services above named, they were well suited and profitable.

November 25. In or about this period, when Houston Street was being raised to the grade, many feet above the wet lands between Broadway and Third Avenue, a gentleman who had been mayor of the city remarked to his companion in my hearing, "I pity the man who owns this."

The "Red House," fronting on Second Avenue between One Hundred and Tenth and One Hundred and Thirteenth streets, having a vacant area attached, was rented by an association of gentlemen, and occupied solely as a resort for pigeon­shooting; named after the well­known house and grovels for pigeon­shooting near London. In a few years, however, the deaths of three of the principal stockholders and patrons induced the remainder to dispose of the lease, when the place was employed as a hotel, a short trotting­track was laid out, and it soon became the headquarters of driving and trotting. It was here the prowess of "Flora Temple," originally purchased for the considerable sum of eighty dollars, was first evinced.

the originators of this enterprise were James Minell. Jehiel Jagger, Jacob Harsen, George W. Blunt, John Lawrence, and some few others, with whom 1 was associated.

December 31, Chapel Street (College Place) was widened from Franklin to Murray Street.

In April of the previous year, Lexington Avenue was opened and John Street, from Broadway to Pearl Street, widened, and the New York and Harlem Railroad in operation from Prince Street to Murray Hill.

Shinbone Alley was opened from Wooster Street (University Place) to Fifth Avenue, and between Washington Square and Eighth Street (Washington Place).