strength, good-humor, safe citizenship, and—­if the economists must be satisfied—­money-value to the commonwealth.  Already, too, there are several thousand men, women, and children who resort to the Park habitually:  some daily, before business or after business, and women and children at regular hours during the day; some weekly; and some at irregular, but certain frequent chances of their business.  Mr. Astor, when in town, rarely misses his daily ride; nor Mr. Bancroft; Mr. Mayor Harper never his drive.  And there are certain working-men with their families equally sure to be met walking on Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon; others on Saturday.  The number of these habitues constantly increases.  When we meet those who depend on the Park as on the butcher and the omnibus, and the thousands who are again drawn by whatever impulse and suggestion of the hour, we often ask, What would they have done, where would they have been, to what sort of recreation would they have turned, if to any, had there been no park?  Of one sort the answer is supplied by the keeper of a certain saloon, who came to the Park, as he said, to see his old Sunday customers.  The enjoyment of the ice had made them forget their grog.

Six or seven years ago, an opposition brought down the prices and quadrupled the accommodations of the Staten Island ferry-boats.  Clifton Park and numerous German gardens were opened; and the consequence was described, in common phrase, as the transformation of a portion of the island, on Sunday, to a Pandemonium.  We thought we would, like Dante, have a cool look at it.  We had read so much about it, and heard it talked about and preached about so much, that we were greatly surprised to find the throng upon the sidewalks quite as orderly and a great deal more evidently good-natured than any we ever saw before in the United States.  We spent some time in what we had been led to suppose the hottest place, Clifton Park, in which there was a band of music and several thousand persons, chiefly Germans, though with a good sprinkling of Irish servant-girls with their lovers and brothers, with beer and ices; but we saw no rudeness, and no more impropriety, no more excitement, no more (week-day) sin, than we had seen at the church in the morning.  Every face, however, was foreign.  By-and-by came in three Americans, talking loudly, moving rudely, proclaiming contempt for “lager” and yelling for “liquor,” bantering and offering fight, joking coarsely, profane, noisy, demonstrative in any and every way, to the end of attracting attention to themselves, and proclaiming that they were “on a spree” and highly excited.  They could not keep it up; they became awkward, ill at ease, and at length silent, standing looking about them in stupid wonder.  Evidently they could not understand what it meant:  people drinking, smoking in public, on Sunday, and yet not excited, not trying to make it a spree.  It was not comprehensible.  We ascertained that one of the ferry-boat bars had disposed