If New York has a profusion of gilt and glitter in its high life, it has also the real gold. The best society of the city is not to be found in what are known as "fashionable circles." It consists of persons of education and refinement, who are amongst the most polished and cultivated of the American people. To this class belonged Fennimore Cooper and Washington Irving. It is small, very exclusive, and careful as to whom it admits to its honors. Shoddy and its votaries cannot enter it, and therefore it is decidedly unfashionable. CHAPTER VI. THE TOMBS. Leaving Broadway at Leonard or Franklin streets, one finds himself, after a walk of two blocks in an easterly direction, in a wide thoroughfare, called Centre street. His attention is at once attracted by a large, heavy granite building, constructed in the style of an Egyptian temple. This is the Tombs. The proper name of the building is "The Halls of Justice," but it is now by common consent spoken of simply as the Tombs. It occupies an entire square, and is bounded by Centre, Elm, Franklin, and Leonard streets. The main entrance is on Centre street, through a vast and gloomy corridor, the sternness of which is enough to strike terror to the soul of a criminal. Within the walls which face the street, is a large quadrangle. In this there are three prisons, several stories high. One of these is for men, the other for boys, and the third for women. The gallows stands in the prison yard, when there is need for it, all executions of criminals in this city being conducted as privately as possible. The prison is one of the smallest in America, and is utterly inadequate to the necessities of the city. It was built at a time when New York was hardly half as large as the metropolis of to-day, and is now almost always overcrowded to an extent which renders it fearful. It is kept perfectly clean, its sanitary regulations being very rigid. It is very gloomy in its interior, and is one of the strongest and securest prisons in the world. [Illustration: The Tombs--City Prison.] No lights are allowed in the cells, which are very small, but a narrow aperture cut obliquely in the wall, near the ceiling, admits the sunshine, and at the same time cuts off the inmates from a view of what is passing without. Besides these, there are six comfortable cells located just over the main entrance. These are for the use of criminals of the wealthier class, who can afford to pay for such comforts. Forgers, fraudulent merchants, and the like, pass the hours of their detention in these rooms, while their humbler, but no more guilty brothers in crime are shut up in the close, narrow cells we have described. These rooms command a view of the street, so that their occupants are not entirely cut off from the outer world. THE BUMMER'S CELL.