The disease which such institutions are designed to cure must be very common; for where is the family that has not a drunkard in its circle of connections? It is true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; but not on that account must the pound of cure be withheld. The railroad which connects New York and Binghamton is the Erie, which is another way of saying that I was detained some hours on the journey home; and this afforded me the novel experience of working my way up town in a New York street-car an hour or two before daylight. The car started from the City Hall at half past two A.M., and received, during the first three miles of its course, twenty-seven persons. It so happened that nearly every individual of them, including the person coming home from the Asylum, was out of bed at that hour through alcohol. There were three drunken vagabonds asleep, who were probably taking a cheap lodging in the car by riding to Harlem and back,--two hours and forty minutes' ride for fourteen cents. In one corner was coiled away a pale, dirty, German Jew of the Fagin type, very drunk, singing snatches of drinking choruses in broken English. Next to him was his pal, a thick-set _old_ Charley Bates, also drunk, and occasionally joining in the festive songs. A mile of the ride was enlivened by an argument between C. Bates and the conductor, on the subject of a cigar, which Mr. Bates insisted on smoking, in violation of the rule. The controversy was carried on in "the English language." Then there were five German musicians, perfectly sober and very sleepy, with their instruments in their hand, returning, I suppose, from some late saloon or dance-house. One woman was in the car, a girl of twenty, who appeared to be a performer in a saloon, and was now, after having shed her spangles and her ribbons, going home in dirty calico drawn tight over a large and obvious hoop, under the protecting care of a nice young man. There were several young and youngish men, well-dressed, in various stages of intoxication, who had probably been at the lawless "late houses," singing and drinking all night, and were now going home to scare and horrify mothers, sisters, or wives, who may have been waiting five hours to hear the scratch of their latch-key against the front door. What a picture did the inside of that car present, when it was filled upon both sides with sleepy, bobbing drunkards and servants of drunkards, the girl leaning sleepily upon her neighbor's shoulder, the German musicians crouching over their instruments half dead with sleep, old Fagin bawling a line of a beery song, and the conductor, struggling down through the midst, vainly endeavoring to extract from boozy passengers, whether they were going "through," or desired to be dropped on the way. It was a fit ending to a week at the Inebriate Asylum. THE END. Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.