The great entrance is liberally supplied with an abundance of chairs, benches, &c., and decorated with capacious spittoons, and a stove which glows red-hot in the winter.

Newspapers, of the thinnest substance and the most microscopic type, and from every part of the Union, are scattered about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied--groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps.

Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted legs dangling over the back of one chair, while the owner thereof is supporting his centre of gravity on another.

One feature is common to them all--busy-ness; whether they are talking, or reading, or cracking nuts, a peculiar energy shows the mind is working.

Further inside is the counter for the clerks who appoint the rooms to the travellers, as they enter their names in a book; on long stools close by is the corps of servants, while in full sight of all stands the "Annunciator," that invaluable specimen of American mechanical ingenuity, by which, if any bell is pulled in any room, one loud stroke is heard, and the number of the room disclosed, in which state it remains until replaced; so that if everybody had left the hall, the first person returning would see at once what bells had been rung during his absence, and the numbers of the rooms they belonged to.