The massive door-plate, and highly polished, distorted knocker, no longer grace the oaken panels of number 85; but a republican sign over the family-looking doorway tells you that "the front room, second floor," is occupied by Messrs. Flint & Snarle. After passing up a flight of broad, uncarpeted stairs, you again see the name of that respectable firm painted on a light of ground glass set in the office door. Once on the other side of that threshold, you breathe mercantile air. There have been so many brain-trying interest calculations worked out on those high desks, that the very atmosphere, figuratively speaking, is mathematical. The sign should not read Flint & Snarle, for Snarle has been dead six months, and it is not pleasant to contemplate a name without an owner--it is not to every one, but Mr. Flint likes to read the sign, and think that Snarle is dead. He was the reverse of Flint, and that his name should have been _Snarle_ at all is odd, for in life he was the quintessence of quietness, and the oil of good nature. But Flint is well named; he is chalcedony at heart. Nobody says this, but everybody knows it. Nell, the pretty match-girl, who sells her wares in Wall-street, never approaches him, nor the newsboys; and blind men, with sagacious, half-fed dogs, steer clear of him by instinct. _He_ doesn't tolerate paupers, and Italian hand-organs with monkey accompaniments--not he. The man who has not as much money as the surviving senior of Flint & Snarle, is a dog--in Flint's distinguished estimation. His God is not that divine Presence, whose thought "Shaped the world, And laid it in the sunbeams." Flint's God is Gold.-- "Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammered and rolled; Heavy to get, and light to hold; Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold; Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old To the very verge of the church-yard mould; Price of many a crime untold: Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!" Flint is about fifty-three years of age; but if you could forget his gray hair, and look only at those small, piercing black eyes, you would hardly think him forty. His black dress-coat is buttoned around his somewhat attenuated form, and he wears a stiff white cravat because it looks religious. In this respect, and perhaps in others, you will find Flint's prototype on every corner--people who look religious, if religion can be associated with the aspect of an undertaker. It is Monday morning.