The North Carolinian

Correspondence of the North Carolinian.

NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 1848.

'Since my last,' as a writer says, giving readers to understand that he is a regular correspondent, I might, could, would, or should have written ere this, but 'numerous engagements,' dearth of news, no not that,—some want of inclination, and pretty considerable number of engagements, have altogether kept me from writing.

Since my last, (first too, wasn't it?) I have been pretty much through the two kingdoms, that is, my Uncle Sam's 'big acre lot,' and her Britannic Majesty's dominions in North America, and, as Bombastes Furioso would say, most every where else. A sojourn in this city, the Modern Babylon of America, is always one of excitement, and may be one of enjoyment. The philosophy of living in New York is a deep study. How many thousands, drinking the very dregs of poverty, live here, or rather drag out a miserable existence, who would live comfortably and reputably if they would move into the country. But they won't do that. They prefer a life of excitement, of beggary, of cold, hunger and misery, for the sake of a mere sight of splendor, luxury and elegance, and rather live here in penury, than live a life of comfort and industry in the interior. You have seen in the city prints of late, an account of a Dr. Wells from Hartford, Conn., a Dentist, who came here to practice his profession, and who, from some unaccountable cause, took it into his head to throw vitriol on the faces and clothes of several girls who were walking Broadway. He was detected, arrested, thrown in prison, and rather than endure the disgrace of living with a dishonored name, took his own life by severing the femoral artery with a razor. Some say he was insane; and he says, in a letter written for publication, after he had made up his mind to slay himself, that he did it under the excitement produced by inhaling chloroform, which he was in the habit of taking and administering to his patients. This case is not a very unusual one. Thousands of persons, of not very strong intellects, can go through life very respectably in the country, or interior cities, who can not bear up under the shock of bodily and mental excitement, and the temptation of a city like this. As Burns says,

'What's done, we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.'

I think sometimes that no one knows what life is in crowds, without spending some weeks or months in a Babel like this. Things that would create a great excitement in the country towns, here are smothered in the constant whirl of city life.

Let us see; if I rightly recollect, we were in imagination walking up Broadway, seeing the 'sights and shows' at the date of my last. Look at that plain brick front on the west side of Broadway near Reade street. In there is a firm of brothers, Babcock by name, who are engaged in making and selling a new kind of coffin, or sarcophagus; which is such a compound of iron with other metals, that rust, corrosion or decay, will not consume it. By pumping out the air, after the body is placed in it, and then sealing down the lid with a double glass over the face, the corpse will be preserved scores, or perhaps hundreds of years. So say the makers. These articles are of very great convenience to keep on ship board, and the Washington steamer has several in her transatlantic trips. They make the best possible mode of conveying the remains of deceased persons a long distance, by land or water. A gentleman who resides in Charleston, S. C., was spending the summer here, lost two children. They were placed in the metallic sarcophagus, and the youngest, a boy of some five summers, had a bunch of flowers, real flowers, fresh plucked, placed in his hand, and at the end of six weeks, when they left for the south, the flowers remained unaltered, just as bright and fresh as when placed in the coffin. The faces had also undergone not the slightest change. Such is one purpose, and a very laudable one, of making an invention in the mechanic arts, to rob death and the grave of their terrors. In the building, next to this establishment, an ingenious man of wealth, a Mr. Randal, has got a perfect model in cast iron, of a railway, engines, cars and all, that he proposes to have erected over Broadway, supported by iron posts. This, with cars constantly going by stationary engines at the rate of some six miles an hour, and stationary tenders, to take up and put down passengers, will, it is thought by the inventor, be the best means to relieve Broadway of its crowd of omnibuses. The plan looks to me very reasonable, if we could make pedestrians overcome the fears they must have at seeing and hearing a constantly moving succession of cars, directly over head, and liable by a crash to come down and crush all beneath. Broadway you know is constantly thronged, and every accident occurring on an elevated railway, must prove fatal to some.

A good one is told of a fellow who came into the city from the interior, and was promenading up Broadway, in the morning, and meeting a very dense crowd, told his city friends they had better 'wait till the crowd had passed.' They might as well have been in the place of the Irishman on the bank of the river, who stood waiting till the river should all flow by. In that house near the corner of Broadway and Walker street, is Mrs. Pelby's celebrated exhibition of wax statuary. This 'celebrated' exhibition is voted a bore and a humbug, and as the 'show' don't pay, it is about to be removed to that collection of all sorts of materials, Barnum's American Museum.

Yesterday, no Saturday, I was walking up Centre street, and two little girls were just ahead of me, when one of them fell down, and in falling, broke a bottle she was carrying. The bottle broke, and as she got up, the blood poured in a stream from her hand, a piece of glass having cut a severe gash in her wrist. She screamed with pain and fright, but I told her she was not much hurt, (I wish I could have believed my own words,) and grasping her little arm, went with her to a surgeon's office near by, where a bandage appeased the little sufferer, and she was sent home. Such is a picture of what one sees, hears and thinks of during a day in New York.

Yours,

KNICKERBOCKER.