Manhattan Island, west of Broadway and south of Trinity Church, was, during the last century, occupied by the substantial mansions of the ancient Knickerbockers, and as late as the first third of the present century was not relinquished as a place of residence by people of aristocratic pretensions. Before the civil war, the annual fairs of the American Institute were held in Castle Garden, within whose walls Grisi and Mario and Jenny Lind sang, and on summer afternoons children, accompanied by nursemaids, romped upon the grass under the grand old trees on the Battery. Then the Bowling Green Fountain, with its picturesque pile of rocks, was still an ancient landmark; and the goat pastures above Fifty-ninth Street were being cleared for the planting of Central Park. After the war the few remaining occupants of pretentious residences fled to the northward of Madison Square, and the sightliest and most picturesque portion of New York City was abandoned to saloons, emigrant boarding houses, warehouses, and shops, for, unlike the down-town section east of Broadway, it was not invaded and colonized by bankers, brokers, and importing houses. Mr. David Morning, now widely known as the Arizona Gold King, selected this portion of New York City for the experiment of organizing pleasant and economical home lives for a class of dwellers in cities not ordinarily the subject of elemosynary effort. The poverty of the very poor, who sometimes lack even for food or shelter, is hardly more distressing to the sufferers than the poverty of men who struggle to maintain a respectable position upon incomes inadequate, even with the most economical management, to meet their expenses. How is a married man, having an income of one, two, or even three thousand dollars per annum, derived from work which must be performed by him, as clerk, journalist, physician, or lawyer, upon Manhattan Island, to live there with such surroundings as are befitting his education and position? He will be compelled to pay one-third or one-half of his income for a flat; an entire house is out of the question, unless he betake himself to such a locality in the city as will exile his family from social consideration. If he live in the suburbs, he must arise at daylight and stumble along unlighted lanes to the railroad station, and pass two or three hours of his time each day standing in a crowded ferryboat, or hanging to the straps of a jammed car, alternately frozen and roasted, and always stifled with the reeking perfume of unventilated vehicles and unsavory fellow-travelers, for while it may be true that all men are politically equal, they are not always equally well washed.