CONTENTS PAGE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, AND WIVES AND HUSBANDS, AND VENERABLE MEN TO READ AND REMEMBER FOREVER! 2 LIFE OF STEPHEN H. BRANCH. 10 LEGISLATIVE ROBBERS. 13 [Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR. Volume I.—No. 6.] SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1858. [Price 2 Cents.] For Boys and Girls, and Wives and Husbands, and Venerable Men to read and remember forever! _The corrupt antecedents of Judge Russell and Superintendent Tallmadge—Sad revelations—The founders of Straw Bail dissected to their marrow bones, by a man who was in collusion with them in their deeds of public villainy._ In 1841, I (Stephen H. Branch) went into the law office of Mr. Seely, in Fulton street, who, being absent, I awaited his return. He had an interesting boy to open his office and run errands. I asked him if he was a native of the city, and he said yes, and told me that his father and mother were dead, and that his grandmother had recently died, and that his only surviving relative was an aunt, who was an actress, and travelling over the country, and that she seldom visited the city, which made him feel very lonely and unhappy. I asked him if he would like to have me teach him gratuitously, and he said he would—that he was at school in Connecticut before his grandmother died, and was obliged to close his studies in consequence of her death—and that he would have travelled with his aunt, after his grandmother died, if she had not made him promise on her bed of death, that he would never become an actor. I saw genius in the youth, and strongly sympathised with his loneliness and misfortunes, and soon began to teach him during his leisure hours. His aunt was long absent, and sent him no money, and the lady with whom he boarded got uneasy, and I took him to board with me, at Mrs. Mitchell’s, in Broadway, with whom Otto Dressel, the Reverend Doctor George Potts’ music teacher, subsequently boarded in Bond, and at the corner of Houston and McDougal streets. While we boarded with Mrs. Mitchell, an English boy came there, and formed his acquaintance, who had recently come to America with a German traveller. They were about the same age, and congenial from mutual loneliness, and they immediately formed a devoted friendship. I taught them, both in English and Latin, and I dearly loved them. I did all I could to please them, and improve their minds, and I took them to Flushing, and Newark, and Albany, for pastime. The English boy left the city with the German traveller, and was absent several months. I got the American boy situations in lawyers’ offices and dry goods stores, where he seldom stayed long, and he became a great tax on my limited means, but I clung to him in my darkest hours. He told me that he desired to dine at the Astor House, with the son of a lawyer, in whose employ he had been.