Beneath thy chimes passed pomp of pride, Here many a royal love hath come, Whose beauties long since faded—died, Whose dulcet voice is long since dumb. Thou rang’st the royal infant’s birth, Thou tolled’st above the royal bier: Kings, potentates have sunk to earth— Still art thou speaking calmly here. Still speak’st above the noise and din Of the fair city’s glittering sweep— Thy deep, pathetic tones do win My very soul—I list and weep. Thou only art eternal here, Thy voice the only voice that stays, Out-ringing, far-toned, deep and clear— Unmeasured is thy length of days. Thrones crumble—empires pass away, And great republics spring to place; If but men better seem to-day, Why mourn the faults of age or race? Why mourn the sad and bitter past, If but from it the perfect flower Of justice springeth up at last To sweeten all the present hour? Why mourn that gilded thrones should fall, And jeweled crowns forget to shine, Since Right will triumph over all, Moved onward by a power divine? THE NEW YORK CUSTOM HOUSE. BY COLEMAN E. BISHOP. One day I said to the Factotum of the Collector of Customs in New York, “I must do up the Custom House in a magazine article of three thousand five hundred words; how much time shall I need to give to the collection of data here?” Factotum smiled compassionately on me and said: “About three months!” In this granite building on Wall Street, with its tall Ionic columns, is transacted a business greater than all the industries of the United States combined half a hundred years ago. The merchandise that was inspected, weighed, counted, measured, valued, catalogued here last year was valued at—count the figures!—$857,430,637. The catalogue includes over three thousand articles, many of which you never heard of and would not even recognize the names thereof. Each of these articles has its particular rate of duty, some having two or three different ones. These have to be calculated specifically on every package by quantity, or if the duty be _ad valorem_, the value of the article has to be first determined and the duty then calculated on the quantity of goods of that class. These estimates and adjustments form the most intricate and delicate business known to civilization. We sometimes think _things_ are plain and easy to administer upon, but the whole range of metaphysics and abstract thought is not more perplexing and doubtful than this mere business matter of levying and collecting the duties on goods passing the custom house.