and as it disappeared I called a watcher from another room, and went out into the open air for a few moments to recover myself under the midnight stars. When I was sure of myself I returned and took my place again alone. Then I asked that, if that appearance were real and not an hallucination, would it be made once more manifest to me; and again the phenomenon was repeated, and the kind, smiling face looked up at me--a face new to me yet wondrously familiar. Afterwards I recalled my friend's frequent description of her dead father whom she dearly loved, but whom I had never seen, and I could not help the impression that it was his face I saw the hour that his daughter died. A DECADE OF RETROGRESSION. BY FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWETZKY. During the ten years which ended with 1889, the great metropolis of the western continent added to the assessed valuation of its taxable property almost half a billion dollars. In all other essential respects save one, the decade was a period of retrogression for New York City. Crime, pauperism, insanity, and suicide increased; repression by brute force personified in an armed police was fostered, while the education of the children of the masses ebbed lower and lower. The standing army of the homeless swelled to twelve thousand nightly lodgers in a single precinct, and forty thousand children were forced to toil for scanty bread. Prostitution, legalized in the purchase of besmirched foreign titles and forced upon the attention of youth in the corrupting annals of the daily press, was flaunted publicly as never before. Scientists competed for the infamous distinction of inventing appliances for murder by electricity, while in the domain of politics the sale of votes in the closing years of the decade was more notorious than at any period of the city's history. In a society in which all things are commodities to be had for money, the labor power of stalwart men and tiny children, the innocence of delicately cherished girlhood, the marriage tie, the virtue of the servant, and the manhood of the statesman, it is eminently fitting that the record of progress should be kept officially in dollars and cents. This is done in all our communities in the report of the disbursing officer who is known in New York City under the title of the Comptroller. His report shows what money the city spends, the sources from which it is derived, and the purposes for which it is used. The following data taken from statement "G" of his report for '89, may be readily verified, and will prove, upon examination of the original, to be but few among many conspicuous indications of retrogression.