Life on Broadway (New York City).

exquisite costumes are to Be discovered Between Twenty-third Street and Union Square on a tine afternoon than a month's investigation will reveal in any other city. This is not to be interpreted as praise of any particular style of American beauty. All types are aggregated in that fluttering stream of feathers and petticoats. The looker-on passes through a confliction of ecstasies in the contemplation of all the varieties. Constancy becomes an impossibility when all that is dark and sensuously melting in woman flits by in a compact brunette, to be succeeded by all that is fair and heavenly in a spirituelle blonde — when perfection seduces us one moment in the petite, and the next moment embodies herself in a voluptuous amplitude of rosy flesh.

Though all the women we see are not pretty, an entrancing proportion are, and a still larger proportion are attired with a discriminating liberality of taste which employs vivid color without a suggestion of gaudiness. Another characteristic is the vivacity of manner, and the abundant use of flowers, both natural and artificial, as a decoration. In the time of violets and roses the air of this overheated city street is as fragrant as a garden. Nearly every woman wears a bouquet in her breast, and a perfect legion of sidewalk peddlers add to the sweetness with small bunches held out for sale in baskets and on trays.

Most of the commodities visible are those which women buy. The dry-goods stores preponderate, and after these are tile glove stores, where plaster arms display the monstrous absurdity of twenty-two-button kids; the stationers' where the last fashions in note-papers and cards are revealed; the fancy stores, whose windows are filled with miracles of tortoise-shell and ivory carving and expensive ornaments for the house and the person; the photographers', where pictures are sold of the last idol of the hour; and time confectioners' whose sweetmeats are put up in time daintiest and most extravagant packages. Even the hawkers seem to understand the sex from which they are to expect patronage, and adapt their wares accordingly. An effectual appeal is made to woman's softness by the sleepy Spitz pups which are temptingly held out in the palms of a fanciers hands, where they resemble balls of wool; and a stronger appeal yet is made by the one-armed soldier, whose barrel-organ has a hard time in making itself heard above the noise of the vehicles. Other vendors offer pressed ferns, toys, plants, and photograph-holders. It may be imagined from the presence of the sidewalk merchants that the crowd is not par excellence fashionable, and it is not; but it is prosperous, gay, and animated.

When the business of her brief hour is partly over or finished, the outer woman having been provided for, the inner woman refreshes after her own fashion and in her