The teachers receive
from 80l. to 300l. a year, and very high attainments are required.
Besides the common and industrial schools, there are means of education
provided for the juvenile portion of the very large foreign population of
New York, principally German. There are several schools held under the
basements of the churches, without any paid teachers. The ladies of New
York, to their honour be it said, undertake, unassisted, the education of
these children, a certain number being attached to every school. Each of
these ladies takes some hours of a day, and youth and beauty may be seen
perseveringly engaged in this arduous but useful task.
The spirit of practical benevolence which appears to permeate New York
society is one of its most pleasing features. It is not only that the
wealthy contribute large sums of money to charitable objects, but they
personally superintend their right distribution. No class is left
untouched by their benevolent efforts; wherever suffering and poverty are
found, the hand of Christianity or philanthropy is stretched out to
relieve them. The gulf which in most cities separates the rich from the
poor has been to some extent lessened in New York; for numbers of ladies
and gentlemen of education and affluence visit among the poor and vicious,
seeking to raise them to a better position.
If there are schools, emigrant hospitals, orphan asylums, and nursing
institutions, to mark the good sense and philanthropy of the people of New
York, so their love of amusement and recreation is strongly evidenced by
the numerous places where both may be procured. There is perhaps as much
pleasure-seeking as in Paris; the search after amusement is characterised
by the same restless energy which marks the pursuit after wealth; and if
the Americans have little time for enjoying themselves, they are resolved
that the opportunities for doing so shall be neither distant nor few.
Thus, Broadway and its neighbourhood contain more places of amusement than
perhaps any district of equal size in the world. These present variety
sufficient to embrace the tastes of the very heterogeneous population of
New York.
There are three large theatres; an opera-house of gigantic proportions,
which is annually graced by the highest vocal talent of Europe; Wood's
minstrels, and Christy's minstrels, where blacks perform in
unexceptionable style to unwearied audiences; and comic operas. There are
al fresco entertainments, masquerades, concerts, restaurants, and oyster
saloons. Besides all these, and many more, New York contained in 1853 the
amazing number of 5980 taverns. The number of places where amusement is
combined with intellectual improvement is small, when compared with other
cities of the same population. There are however some very magnificent
reading-rooms and libraries.
The amount of oysters eaten in New York surprised me, although there was
an idea at the time of my visit that they produced the cholera, which
rather checked any extraordinary excesses in this curious fish.
