This morning I went to Dr. Newton's church in Forty-eighth Street. He has the reputation of being one of the best preachers in New York, and the choir enjoys an equally great reputation. The church was literally packed until the sermon began, and then some of the strollers who had come to hear the anthems moved on. Dr. Newton's voice and delivery were not at all to my taste, so I did not sit out his sermon either. He has a big, unctuous voice, with the intonations and inflections of a showman at the fair. He has not the flow of ideas that struck me so forcibly when I heard the late Henry Ward Beecher in London; he has not the histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was more show than beauty about the music, too. A bellowing, shrieking soprano overpowered all the other voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful tenor that deserved to be heard. * * * * * New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day. Every woman has a new bonnet and walks abroad to show it. [Illustration: SOME EASTER BONNETS.] There are grades in millinery as there are in society. The imported bonnet takes the proudest rank; it is the aristocrat in the world of headgear. It does not always come with the conqueror (in one of her numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and a proud, though ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched on the dainty head of a New York belle, and supplemented by a frock from Felix's or Redfern's. It is a unique sight, Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, when all the up-town churches have emptied themselves of their gayly garbed worshipers. [Illustration: KEEPING LENT.] The "four hundred" have been keeping Lent in polite, if not rigorous, fashion. Who shall say what it has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit themselves to the sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration during six whole weeks? These things cannot be lightly judged by the profane. I have even heard of sweet, devout New York girls who limited themselves to one pound of _marrons glacés_ a week during Lent. Such feminine heroism deserves mention. [Illustration: A CLUB WINDOW.]