LILY AND TUNY.

HE other day, with a companion, I went to the "Five Points." Here I had never been before. We went at first to one of its worst recesses, called by the strange, humourous name of Cow Bay. A filthy arched passage-way leads into the little bay, round

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which, wretched houses are crowded, as if afraid of the entrance of sunshine and fresh air. A drunken black woman, with a can in her hand, came reeling into the place behind us. From the dirty windows other women were looking out. Groups of haggard, desperate looking men, were standing at the cow door. Throughout the place there was an indescribable air of confusion, dirt, and misery.

In this court there is one house even more filthy and wretched than the rest. There is scarcely such a house to be found elsewhere in New York. A man owns it who keeps a rum shop, and who makes a fortune from these poor creatures with his houses and his rum. You can hardly see your way as you grope up the stairs. Every now and then you stumble on great heaps of dirt, which have grown hard there for many years;-in the winter nights, the wind whistles so through the little broken windows.

In this miserable house, in a miserable room, a beautiful little girl was discovered last winter. Some negroes had got possession of her. The room was so dark and dirty, that when she was found in it, they could scarcely tell whether she was black or white. There were three or four black men and women who were living in it besides. The little girl was taken at once to Mr. Pease's, and washed and dressed. Everybody who came there, used to call her down to see her, she was such a beautiful child. She did not look at all like the other children in the Five Points. Her skin was soft and white, and her mouth and nose fine, and her head very large and high. She did not shuffle around like some of them, but always had a pretty little graceful step. Well, after a while she began to be ill; I suppose because she had been in such dirty places, and among such people so long. She used to tell us sometimes of her mother, who was up on Blackwell's Island, and of little Tuny, as she called a little sister she had; she was smaller, she said,

and had large pretty eyes, and curls which hung over her face. "A black woman had her."

This was all the way which any of us had to find her little sister, but the missionary was determined to do it. So we went up to Blackwell's Island to see if we could get anything from the mother about her. She was in the hospital, and the doctors said would soon die. You would never have thought her the mother of that pretty child. She looked like an old woman, though she could not have been over thirty, with a red, scarred, ugly face,-rum and something worse had made her such a wreck of a woman.

She told us where to find the child, though she evidently did not wish to tell, and when we were away one of the doctors overheard her say "She would like to see us find Tuny now!" The missionary followed up her directions, and he and Mr. Pease went through almost every negro house in Leonard Street, or Cross Street; sometimes they found traces of her; people spoke of a sweet little white child, with the long curls, who was among the negroes. Once a mulatto woman said she knew who had her, and thought she could find her for them. Mr. E., who was so much interested for her, offered ten dollars to any one who would discover her. But nothing came of it, and we almost gave it up. This looking for one little child in a city of 500,000 inhabitants, is not an easy thing, you

know.

I went up now to the hospital, and tried to get the direction from the mother through some of the nurses. We were told to go first to a laundress in the Irving House, and she would direct us to some one in Water Street, and he would tell us where the black woman was who had little Tuny. Mr. E. tried this, and hunted and hunted, but no child! The news came now that the mother could not live many hours, so that we must get the direction soon or never. At length, at the very last moment almost, the doctors sent us