The Aegis & Intelligencer

A Street Scene at Night in New York.

A correspondent of an eastern journal furnishes the following description to be seen any night during the heated term:

"At night thousands of persons in the Five Points quarter go out into the open streets to remain until morning. All along Baxter and the adjacent streets the inner edges of the sidewalks were lined with blankets and bedticks, upon which half-nude children were sleeping so close together that it was impossible to step between them. They almost laid over one another, entirely without covering, and in many cases with a cellar door, or even the stone flagging alone, for a bed. In one place eight children were asleep on a patch of wooden pavement, six feet long by three wide, and babies scarcely six months old, with naked limbs, lay exposed to the sky on pieces of blankets thrown over cellar doors.

"An hour later it was curious to see the women and girls sitting on the curbstones, and making their toilet for the night by twisting up their hair and throwing a shawl around them. One after another they laid down in the open air, beside the children, and regardless of the noisy throng that almost jostled them in passing, to all appearance dropped comfortably asleep. Gradually the noise in the streets died out. A bevy of young girls, who had been singing The Star-Spangled Banner and other patriotic airs, fell asleep one after the other on a cellar door, and the sounds of shouting and laughter ceased.

"The men pulled off their boots, and while some placed beds on the sidewalk to sleep on, others laid down on the stones or boards, and a few braced themselves up in the corners of the doors to act as sentinels over the sleepers.

"'So they sleep every night,' said a policeman, 'and we don't disturb them. They couldn't stand the heat indoors - it would kill them.'"