AT about eleven o'clock, on a fine day, a tall elderly man, habited in a long-skirted blue overcoat, with a broad-brimmed hat on his head, his neck enveloped in the ample folds of a white cravat, the ends of which toyed pleasantly with the morning air; and having in his hand a cane, whose top was carved in a miniature likeness of a dog with a distressing countenance, slowly descended the precipitous flight of stone steps which form the rear mode of egress from the City Hall. Having safely landed himself, the elderly gentleman paused, rubbed one hand gently over the other, as if congratulating himself that one of the perils of the day was over, and then walked out into the Park, and deliberately set his watch by the town-clock. Being a cautious man, however, and a man of experience, and one who piqued himself on doing every thing better than any one else, and upon being always right when all the rest of the world was wrong, and on being in general in all respects somewhat--but not too much, merely a trifle--superior to the ordinary run of mankind; and being aware that the town-clock had four faces, which always differed in opinion as to the hour; and being too knowing to be taken in by any small trick of that kind, he winked to himself, and took the pains to make the circuit of the building, and successively to inspect each face of the aforesaid public time-keeper; and having ascertained that the majority was with the one which he had first consulted, he pulled his waistcoat very high up in front and dropped his watch into a small pocket in the waistband of his trowsers. After which, he buttoned his coat and set about his day's work with no little complacency and good humor. The direction which he took led to one of the poorer parts of the town; and although he walked slowly, it was not long before he was in the thick of those narrow, ill-ventilated streets, hemmed in by decaying houses and reeking cellars, which proclaim, plainer than words, that vice and want, and a thousand other ills which canker the heart, and eat up all that is noble in human nature, are lurking in their dark recesses. Mr. Chicken, for he it was, paused in front of one of the dim holes, where a dozen wretched beings, ill clad and ill fed, were herding together, and wondered why they _would_ live in such places; and why they did not pay more attention to their dress; really, it was exceedingly shocking; some of them were half naked. 'It's quite indelicate, quite!' said he, mentally: 'Mrs. Chicken would die if she saw it. I declare, I won't be positive--no, yes--no; yet I do think one of them is a woman; I really _do_ think that rug is meant for a petticoat. It _must_ be a woman,' said he, continuing his investigations in a cautious manner. 'It _is_ a woman. Ah! it's agin natur.'