And blessing the inventor of mint julep, who
must have been as wise a king as Solomon, and
as great in chemistry as Glauber, I set out for
Jones's Wood, to see the political Ox-Roasting.

The New York air is very exhilarating.
There is always a breeze from the Hudson or
the Bay. The sky is of a lively blue that
never stagnates into one great veinless block
of lapis lazuli, like an Italian sky. The
streets are fresh and bright; the houses are
of a pure colour; and even marble statues
scarcely tarnish in the changeful atmosphere.
The people in the streets are chiefly business
people, but they move more languidly than we
English do, and are leaner, and have less colour
in their cheeks. Then the negroes mottle life's
chess-board here, and the emigrants make us
think of home, and nobody looks poor or hopeless,
and every one is at least decently dressed and
looks bold and even independent; and there are
hardly any beggars, and the street boys are less
noisy than with us, and less audaciously and
coarsely rude.

Now I reach the beginning of Bowery, where
the old clothes shops are and the low theatres.
An enormous calico flag, sixty feet long, flaps
across the road, with

"DOUGLAS & JOHNSON"

on it. Now comes on the street railroad, an
enormous omnibus car of a yellow dahlia colour.
Above the conductor's head, on the outside balcony,
flutters a red flag, inscribed

"Ox ROASTING IN JONES'S WOOD."

Away we glide, some fifty of us, though drawn
only by two horses, up Third Avenue, all bound
to " the Monster Democratic Rally and Grand
Political Carnival." The car is full, not only
on both seats, but with strange wild-looking
men, of, I should say, no great landed property
(unless you call dirt landed property), who
stand up in the centre of the carriage, holding
on to the roof straps; both balconies outside,
and even the very steps, are crowded. My
democratic friends are not discussing politics, but
beef. One says:

"Sure I have gone without meat for two
days, just to get an appetite for this affair. I
mean to fill in enough now to last till Sunday."

Another says he doesn't care what " the little
giant" says, so he can get some of the Douglas
beef. A third uses his toothpick freely, " to get
all under weigh," as he playfully observes.

We reach the great stables and coach-house
station at Sixty-sixth-street, quite out of the
city (as far as Haarlem), and dismount. There
is a straggling black line of people down the
road for half a mile. It looks like a wavering
train of gunpowder, just laid, and laid zig-zag,
in a fright. I follow the line. The itinerant
dealers, more familiar and less anxious for
purchases than our own costermongers, and wearing
no peculiar dress, are thick as mosquitoes in
a Carolina swamp. There are large red apples,
from New Jersey orchards maple sugar cakes
cheap cigars. There is Lager beer, as the
fresh, light, frothy pleasant beer the Germans
introduced into America is called. There is a
man with the hair coming through his straw hat,
elling " Douglas walking-sticks," and another
man with a felt hat, with a loose crown, has

"DOUGLAS"

painted in large green letters over his stall, and
is shouting to the passers-by:

"That no gentleman need pay at this establishment
who doesn't choose, as Mr. Douglas
has promised to make the matter all right with
me the night before the election."

Further on, a ragged quick-eyed boy is pitching
copper cents with all his might into a willow-pattern
plate, crying, as he does so:

"Twenty-five cents, gentlemen, for every cent
which stops in the plate; one cent for the
throw, and twenty-five cents to the successful
aimer."

Next him a rival boy, flinging a ring at a
large kitchen knife stuck upright in a board
covered with tenpenny nails.

The cry of this speculator is:

"If you never don't risk, you never won't
win. Ten cents to any one who rings a nail,
twenty-five cents to any one who rings the
knife.' Five cents a throw. You can't miss if
you try, gentlemen."

Here come two rival ballad-singers; one,
with a wry mouth, bellows, to the cheery tune of
"Camptown Races":

"In Illinois there can be found—dudah, dudah,
Two nags upon the campaign ground—dudah,
dudah, do.
First, ' Little Dug,' I do declare—  dudah, dudah,
And 'Spotted Abe,' with krinky hair—dudah,
dudah, do."

And to this Notus responds Anster:

"We've pitched our tent on campaign ground,
A few days, a few days,
To give the woollies another round.
Douglas's going home,
The White House is the place he'll stop
In a few days, in a few days;
He must go there, as sure as pop,
For he's going home!"

But I grow careless of these singers as I
approach the man with " the revolving arrow,"
who tells me that if I risk two cents for a turn,
I am to be the proud possessor of as many
"macaroons" as the number the arrow stops at
shall indicate.

Now, I enter the green rail gate of Jones's
Wood, and find myself in a sort of faded tea-garden,
where walks wind about among groves
of stripling trees, rustic temples, rifle galleries,
and dancing-rooms. It is a sloping park, on
the banks of the river, with a pleasant view of
Blackwell's Island opposite, and the penitentiary
and madhouse thereupon. As soon as I enter
I see a banner with the names, of the Tammany
Hall candidates, and in an open glade in the
centre I find a brass band, pounding out " Hail,
Columbia," at the foot of the speakers' platform,
and surrounded by people. On the left-hand
side of the pathway, some four thousand persons
two-thirds rowdy boys with small flags, surround
a large enclosure shut in with a pine fence.
In the centre of this, are light temporary tables,