New York City Sightseeing Tours

warmed, pounced upon him like birds of prey upon a carcass; and then commenced for Crazy a life of prodigality and vice, the end of which is near at hand. In Philadelphia, he stopped with his cronies at one of the most elegant and spacious hotels of the city, stipulating for the exclusive use of it during their stay. He bought fine horses, carriages of the most approved pattern, and furnished a _maison de joie_, where he reveled every night. Many Philadelphians will long remember his daily freaks of extravagance. I will relate one as a sample of the others. One day, as a regiment stopped in the city on its way to the West, he presented it with one thousand baskets of champagne--one basket to each man--a piece of liberality that cost him twenty-five thousand dollars. After spending half a million dollars in the Quaker City, he came to New York in search of new excitements. Here he met with persons who aroused a new feeling in his mind--that of pride. Those capitalists and speculators who drive their fancy teams in Central Park, who keep racehorses, who do their best to resuscitate the fine old times of France under the Regency, were not, he was told, as wealthy as himself. He was bound to live in style, lest he should be taken for a shoddy contractor, who does not know how to spend his money. Crazy, therefore, imitated the leaders of fashion--but in the same way European wood-cutters are imitated by Australasian savages, who, when they cut down a tree, wait for its fall until they are crushed by its weight. He kept as many as forty horses; bet heavily at the races, and lost every time; and hired a theatrical troupe, whom he provided with costly costumes, and who played only for himself and a few friends. One night he was so delighted with the saltatory skill and _pirouettes_ of the dancing-girls of his troupe, that he presented each of them, with a gracefulness of manner that Buckingham himself would have envied, pearls and diamonds worth over one hundred thousand dollars. In short, for a year, he indulged in all conceivable dissipations. But Providence has in store for him one of those visitations that, from time to time, startle and instruct the world. "Crazy believes his main income can never be impaired. Besides the one hundred thousand dollars he has in his pocket--the last of the money found in the Irish widow's strong-box--he fancies he possesses inexhaustible means in the oil well. On returning, he will learn that that source of wealth is dried up, and his only fortune consists of the fifty-two coats he has purchased inside of the past month." CHAPTER XII. BUSINESS IN NEW YORK. The legitimate business of New York is greater than that of any other place in America. The city being the chief centre of our commerce, offers the greatest advantages of any in the land to persons engaged in trade. Merchants at a distance buy whatever they can here, because they like to visit the place, and can thus unite business with pleasure. Two or three millions of strangers annually visit New York, and while here expend large amounts in purchases. People in other parts of the country attach an additional value to an article because it was purchased in the great city. Besides this, one is apt to find the best article in the market here, as it is but natural that the chief centre of wealth should draw to it the best talent in the arts and trades. Merchants from the provinces like the liberal and enterprising spirit which characterizes the dealings of New York merchants. They can buy here on better terms than elsewhere, and their relations with the merchants of this city are generally satisfactory and pleasant. Every thing in New York gives way to business. Private neighborhoods disappear every year, and long lines of magnificent warehouses take the places of the comfortable old mansions of other days. There is now scarcely a respectable neighborhood for residences below Fourth street. The business of the community is steadily advancing up the island. The lower part of the city is being taken up with wholesale and commission houses and manufacturers. The retail men are constantly going up higher. Broadway now has scarcely a residence alon