It is a tenement house, shabby-genteel even in its first pretentious newness; but it has now lost its former appearance even of semi-respectability, and has degenerated to a state of dirt only conceivable by those unhappy families who live two in a house, and are in a constant state of pot-and-kettle war, and of mutual refusing to clean out the common hall. A little mountain of potato skins, and bones, and other kitchen refuse, round which he was forced to make a detour, plainly said to the traveller that the population of the house No. 80 were in the habit of depositing garbage in the gutters, under cover of the night, and in violation of the city ordinance. A highly-perfumed atmosphere surrounds this delightful abode, for the first floor thereof is occupied as a livery stable, which constantly exhales those sweet and pungent odors peculiar to equine habitations. Pulling the sticky bell-handle with as dainty a touch as possible, the Individual was admitted by a slatternly weak-eyed girl of about eighteen, with her hair and dress as tumbled as though she had just been run through a corn-shelling machine, and who was so unnecessarily dirty that even her face had not been washed. She was further distinguished by a wart on her nose of such shape and dimensions that it gave her face the appearance of being fortified by a many-sided fort, which commanded the whole countenance. This interesting young female welcomed her visitor with a clammy “Come in,” and led the way up stairs, he following, in due dread of being for ever extinguished by an avalanche of unwashed keelers and kettles, which were unsteadily piled up on the landing, and which an incautious touch would have toppled over, and deluged the stairs with unknown sweet-smelling compounds, whose legitimate destination was the sewer. On the second floor, directly, judging from the noise, over the stall of the balkiest horse in the stable below, is the room of the Madame. The customer took an observation: The furnishings of the apartment showed an attempt to keep up a show, which was by far too miserably transparent to hide the slovenliness which peeped out everywhere through the tawdry gilding. There were so many oil paintings on the walls, in such gaudy frames, that it seemed as if the room had been dipped into a bath of cheap auction pictures, and hadn’t been wiped dry, or had been out in a shower of them, and hadn’t come in until it had got very wet. A broad gilt window cornice stood leaning in the corner of the room, instead of being in its legitimate place; a pair of lace curtains were wadded up and thrown in a chair, while the windows were covered with the commonest painted muslin shades; a piano-stool stood in the middle of the room, but there was no piano. These were the indications of “better days;” these were the shallow traps set to inveigle the beholder into a belief in the opulence of the occupants of this charming residence.