Twenty-five thousand pianos a year, at a cost of fifteen millions of dollars! Presented in this manner, the figures produce an effect upon the mind, and we wonder that an imperfectly reconstructed country could absorb in a single year, and that year an unprosperous one, so large a number of costly musical instruments. But, upon performing a sum in long division, we discover that these startling figures merely mean, that every working-day in this country one hundred and twelve persons buy a new piano. When we consider, that every hotel, steamboat, and public school above a certain very moderate grade, must have from one to four pianos, and that young ladies' seminaries jingle with them from basement to garret, (one school in New York has thirty Chickerings,) and that almost every couple that sets up housekeeping on a respectable scale considers a piano only less indispensable than a kitchen range, we are rather inclined to wonder at the smallness than at the largeness of the number. The trade in new pianos, however, is nothing to the countless transactions in old. Here figures are impossible; but probably ten second-hand pianos are sold to one new one. The business of letting pianos is also one of great extent. It is computed by the well-informed, that the number of these instruments now "out," in the city of New York, is three thousand. There is one firm in Boston that usually has a thousand let. As the rent of a piano ranges from six dollars to twelve dollars a month,--cartage both ways paid by the hirer,--it may be inferred that this business, when conducted on a large scale, and with the requisite vigilance, is not unprofitable. In fact, the income of a piano-letting business has approached eighty thousand dollars per annum, of which one third was profit. It has, however, its risks and drawbacks. From June to September, the owner of the instruments must find storage for the greater part of his stock, and must do without most of his monthly returns. Many of those who hire pianos, too, are persons "hanging on the verge" of society, who have little respect for the property of others, and vanish to parts unknown, leaving a damaged piano behind them.