CASTLE GARDEN. BY C. E. BISHOP. A song was popular about forty years ago, in which was couched an invitation to every nation to come along and make no delay, as “Uncle Sam is rich enough to give you all a farm.” At Castle Garden, since that invitation, respondent aliens to the number of over seven and a half million have “come along,” and Uncle Sam has redeemed the promise to all who applied. Yet, munificent as is this bounty, the State of New York bestows a more liberal hospitality, and a more beneficent care on the immigrant. During a discussion in a New York club lately of the question “What does this country owe to other nations?” a gentleman vehemently protested against the assumption couched in the question. “When a subject of another nation lands on our shores,” he said, “we meet him with food and raiment, find him occupation, and give him a farm. Talk about our owing other people anything! The obligation is all on the other side.” The speaker did not half recite the obligation that the Empire State assumes on behalf of the stranger. It reaches out arms of protection to him, like a mother yearning across seas, almost from the time he sets sail. It meets the ship at the Lower Bay of New York, inspects its sanitary condition and that of the passenger; hears his complaints, and if he have any grievance, tries to remedy it. It receives him at Castle Garden, helps him to secure and check his baggage and buy a passage ticket to any point at lowest rates. It gives him his mail, if he have any waiting; telegraphs or writes the news of his arrival to his friends, if he have any in this country, and sends him and his baggage to them if his destination be in or near the city. It gives him food if he be hungry; medicine and nursing if he be ill; a Bible if he can read; sends him to an asylum, if he be _non compos mentis_, or back to Europe if he be a pauper. It changes his foreign coin into American on terms of equal value, and gives him a piece of paper with the whole transaction figured out so he can ponder over it and come back for explanations or corrections, if need be. It finds him a hotel, if he want one, the proprietor of which is under heavy bonds to kindly entreat the stranger and not overcharge him; it stands guard with big clubs to keep off biped wolves, and if, notwithstanding, in the exercise of his new-found liberty, he walk into pitfalls, it sends a detective or a policeman to secure him restitution. It finds him immediate occupation at prices that sound fabulous by the side of his old-time pittance; it furnishes interpreters, guides and guardians—in a word, exercises over him a wiser and more helpful paternalism of government than he has ever known. And all this paternal care it extends to him not only when he arrives; it stands ready to renew the guardianship at any time within a year thereafter if he return to Castle Garden and ask it. Most of this it does without charge to the immigrant; all of it is free if he have no money