In the year 1850, and for nearly forty years previous, there could be seen almost every day in the streets of New-Orleans, a very peculiar and remarkable looking old gentleman. Tall and straight as a pillar, with stern, determined features, lit up by eyes of uncommon, almost unnatural brilliancy, with his hair combed back and gathered in a sort of queue, and dressed in the fashion of half a century ago, to wit, an old blue coat, with high collar, well-brushed and patched but somewhat 'seedy' pantaloons, of like date and texture, hat somewhat more modern, but bearing unmistakable proof of long service and exposure to sun and rain; old round-toed shoes, the top-leathers of which had survived more soles than the wearer had outlived _souls_ of his early friends and companions; a scant white vest, ruffled shirt, and voluminous white cravat, completed the costume of this singular gentleman, who, with his ancient blue silk umbrella under his arm, and his fierce eye fixed on some imaginary goal ahead, made his way through the struggling crowds which poured along the streets of New-Orleans. The last time this strange and spectral figure was seen making its accustomed rounds was on the twenty-sixth of October, 1850. On that day, a very remarkable event occurred, which attracted the notice of passers-by and was even snatched up as an item by the ever-vigilant reporters of the daily press; this consisted simply in a notable variation from the routine and habits of the old gentleman in the long-tailed blue. He was seen to stop on Canal street, to hesitate for a few moments, and then deliberately enter an omnibus bound for the lower part of the city. Such an occurrence created quite a sensation among street-corner gossippers. There must really be some new and pressing emergency, which could produce this departure from the custom and invariable habits of forty years; so said every one who knew the old gentleman. The omnibus stopped at the court-house; the subject of these observations and his blue umbrella emerged from it, and both soon disappeared in the corridor leading to the so-called halls of justice. That was the last that was ever seen of the strange old gentleman on the streets of New-Orleans. The evening journals of the next day contained the following obituary: 'Died this morning, the twenty-seventh of October, 1850, at McDonoghville, opposite the city of New-Orleans, after a short illness, John McDonogh, a native of Baltimore, but for forty years a resident of Louisiana.'