been in America, and indeed a week ago on
the Alabama river, I met a well-known duellist
with a little silver bell on his watchchain:
signifying thereby his changeless attachment
to Mr. Bell, one of the candidates for
the presidentship.' These election medals follow
me everywhere barefooted boys bring
cigar-boxes full of them for sale, into the luxurious
marble-paved smoking-rooms of the great
hotels; lean dried-up men hawk them through
the long avenues of the railway-cars, and awake
me to recommend their medals and their " plum
candy;" the shops have trays of them in their
windows; you can almost tell in different cities
how the voting is likely to go, by the majority of
medals you meet, being either "Lincoln" or
"Douglas." The book-stall keepers in the halls
of the hotels, and at the railway stations, teaze
me with portraits of " the rail-splitter," or " the
Union candidate," printed in broad blue on
crimson ribbons; and when these do not confront
me the man next me, in the train or coach,
is sure to be laughing grimly over " The Republican"
or " The Democratic Campaign Songster,"
price ten cents, with all the new election ballads
in it. Election banners flaunt in the air of every
street in New York; vermilion-lettered placards
on the walls entreat you to buy pure procession
fireworks if you are a Wideawake at " Ezekiel
Whitman' s,Twenty-fourth-street, Third Avenue."
If I take up the paper I bought at a street-stall,
just by the St. Nicholas Hotel, I find the leaders
all about " The Grand Mass. Ratification Meeting,"
in the Eighteenth Ward, 14th Assembly
District, to be held to-night at the corner of
First Avenue, and Twenty-first-street, when
Jeremiah Hutchings, the regular Democratic Union
Nominee for the Assembly, will address his
countrymen; or a letter from the " Young
Men's Democratic Union Club," declaring that
the Hon. John Cochrane is "the only man
nominated who can successfully carry the West
District against the Black Republicans," and
entreating all citizens who do not wish to see
the Stars of the Union dimmed, or the Sun of
the New World shorn of its expanding beam,
to rally round Hon. Cochrane and Washington
Duff, his coadjutor.

All the way up Broadway the windows of the
palatial shops are full of election caricatures.
Yankew Notions shows us a rowdy in silk hat,
and boots over trousers, taking boxing lessons
ready for polling-day. Nick Nax presents us
with Abe Lincoln spouting from a platform
of rails, under which grins a half-concealed
nigger. Prank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
relates a sad story of a poor woman at Baltimore
being shot by accident during a fight between
two political clubs, " The Rough Skins"
and "Double Pumps" before mentioned. The
Olive Branch gets more warlike than ever,
and proposes hanging Lincoln to " skeer" the
Black Republicans. At the print-shops we see
lithographs fc of Douglas being flogged by his
motlier for associating with the naughty " Nebraska
Bill," and on the other side of the doorpost,
a gaunt Abraham Lincoln trying to ford
the Potomac and get into a very small " White
House." As for the New York Herald, always
scurrilous, it seems to have gone mad. It gives
a page, this very morning, to discussing the city
candidates, and commenting on their personal
history. It gives a sad picture of city politics;
it treats of "the war of factions, bar-room
and side-walk cliques;" of the " political
saturnalia and General Blue Monday;" of the
headaching quantity of " committees, associations,
and organisations;" " processional parades
becoming chronic;" " turmoil and excitement
bordering on madness." Decentralisation, the
Herald complains, has led to a series of small
cliques in blind alleys and back slums that nominate
people unknown to even the oldest residents
of their own districts. Out comes the
names of these candidates for the Legislature,
in grog-shops innumerable, and on posters
of all sizes pasted on every wall. Then, says
the Herald, come the sham meetings, with
advertised resolutions signed by sham chairmen
and bribed secretaries. The candidates
are introduced, and muke their bow, like
new clowns in a circus. The first scene ends
as all the other scenes of the political farce do,
with a grog-shop, where endless glasses of
"Lager beer," "brandy cocktail," and "Jersey
lightning" are drunk. Then come neglect
of business nay, the very neglect made
into a business loud talking, dollar-collecting,
card-publishing, processions, and so on,
to the election day. Tammany Hall, near
the City Park, is the centre of all this corruption
and abuse; and there is one thing we can
praise the Herald for, and that is its unceasing
efforts to purify and reform the degraded town-
council of New York.

The descriptions of the candidates are worth
quoting, as they certainly serve to show the
justice of the Herald's invectives against Tammany
Hall.

We select six "political portraits" as an example
and a warning:

                         CANDIDATE No. 1.

After considerable search amongst the liquor stores
and head-quarters of the runners and men of all
work, we succeeded in finding a person that had
seen James Hayes, the Tammany candidate; yet no
one was able to inform us as to the whereabouts of
his habitation. He was born in Ireland, and bears
all the marks of his race; is about thirty years of
age, medium height, cropped hair, red whiskers and
red face, with an independent air about him so
characteristic of the loafing class of Irishmen. The
only business that we could learn that he was
engaged in was a runner and an appendage at the
primary elections.

An election runner does not seem a man of
the right class of mind for town-councilman for
a great city.

                       CANDIDATE No. 2.

It appears from the posters to be found stuck up
in different portions of the district, that Michael W.
Burns, the Breckinridge candidate, is raising the
gridiron cry upon Woodruff with great zeal. Every
prominent place in the district is placarded with an
enormous gridiron standing on legs, and with long