the highest interest. The only objection of any weight that we have heard urged against Private O'Reilly's plan is, that his organization cannot be permanent, as, in four years, at twenty-five per cent. per annum, it will have absorbed all the property, real and personal, of the city, and there will be nothing left to steal." To this Private O'Reilly answers that, when all the taxpayers have been turned out into the streets, full means of activity will still be left to the organization in plots and efforts to cheat each other. "Inside rings" will then have to be formed, having for their object a further " consolidation" of plunder. He is also sanguine that, with the triumph of the scheme in this city, politicians all over the State and country may take it up, 'until finally it shall be placed in a position to dictate one of its own members or agents for the next Presidency. The proceedings of the caucus will be looked for with interest.

F

IT

on the proper day of the proper month, several hundred years before the commencement of the Christian era, the chief editor of the Athens Herald had sent out one of his reporters of an afternoon, with orders to bring back an exact account of the Eleusinian Mysteries-to reveal any of which to the

uninitiated incurred the penalty of death-the feelings of that reporter might not have been of the most festive character. We fancy him securing his stylus and tablets next to his manly breast, taking an affectionate farewell of the wife who weeps and the children who cling to him; then, wrapping around him his reportorial toga and drawing tighter the strings of his sandals, so that he may be prepared, if need be, to make the best time ever witnessed in the Olympic games. Finally we see him drop on one knee, raise his eyes to the white porch of his home, breathe a hasty invocation to the Gods of the Acropolis, then pull down his ivy wreath over his eyes, and dash off madly towards the scene of the mystic and sacred ceremonials.

HOW OUR REPORTER ENTERED THE CAUCUS ROOM.

Human nature, even in the reportorial form, is much the same now as it was three thousand years ago; and as the Athenian reporter, in toga and sandals, would have felt while endeavoring to gain admission as a "dead-head" to the Eleusinian rites, so felt your reporter, in stove-pipe hat and Wellingtons, while attempting to gain entrance to the initial caucus of the new political organization, known as

the "Joint Stock Consolidated Grand Junction Lobby League," with which the name of Private Miles O'Reilly, Forty-seventh Regiment, New York Volunteers, has been recently connected. What would have been his fate if compelled to remain outside in the immense and indescribable jam of humanity which awaited the regular opening of the doors, it is not for him to say. Ribs have only a certain strength, and the crushing in of the breast-bone upon the spine is not good treatment for consumptive patients. Fortunately, however, he found a "next friend" (such things are useful and plentiful in politics), who took him round to a private entrance in rear of the caucus room, where Messrs. Dick Connolly and Sal. Skinner were on duty as janitors. These gentlemen he at once recognized by their regalia as promising knights of the "Most illustrious D. B. Order ;" and on giving them the pass-word and grip of an "arch-past" he was at once allowed to enter the mystic chamber, fifteen or twenty minutes in advance of its being thrown open to the rush of the regular caucus representatives.

THE CORPUS DELICTI IN COURT-MODEL OF THE CITY

OF NEW YORK.

The room selected for the caucus, in the St. Nicholas Hotel, was one of great size, oblong in form, -its rear windows very appropriately commanding a fine view of Mercer street. Towards this end there was a large stage, about three feet high, and covered with green baize, which ran across the room; and on this stage there was an exact model of the city of New York-all its streets laid out, all its church spires visible; every house, store and shanty having its counterpart in miniature, and many of its public parks and squares still showing traces of having been used as encampments. Thousands of beautiful models of sailing vessels and steamers lay moored around the piers. On this gentle slope stands Murray Hill. There is the City Hall. The Park, with all its winding roads, woody ravines, glassy lakelets, magnificent bridges, breezy hills and odorous garden patches, lies exposed to view. Here, at Fort Washington, the primeval rock pushes up one shoulder through the trimly shaven grass in rear of James Gordon Bennett's house. This is the highest point of Manhattan