undermining their castles -- for in New York, as in England, "every man's house is his castle." These form the advanced guard of the growing metropolis ; and so eccentric is Fortune in the distribution of her favours in this land of general equality, that a dweller in these "suburban cottages," -where swine and goats are seen instead of deer and blood-cattle, may, not many years in the future, occupy a palace upon Central Park -- perhaps, upon the very spot where he now uses a pig for a pillow, and breakfasts upon the milk of she-goatsL In a superb mansion of his own,

A SQUATTER VILLAGE.

within an arrow's flight of Madison Park, lived a middle-aged man in 1861, whose childhood was thus spent among the former squatters in that quarter,

"Jones's "Woods," formerly occupying the space between the Third Avenue and the East River, and Sixtieth and Eightieth Streets, are rapidly disappearing. Streets have been cut through them, clearings for buildings have been made, and that splendid grove of old forest trees a few years ago, has been changed to clumps, giving shade to lai'ge numbers

THE HUDSON.

of pleasure-seekers during the hot months of summer, and the delightful weeks of early autumn. There, in profound retirement, in an elegant mansion on the bank of the East River, lived David Provoost, better

PROVOOSTS TOMB-- JONES'S \YOODS.

known to the inhabitants of New York -- more than a hundred years ago -- as "Eeady-money Provoost." This title he acquired because of the sudden increase of his wealth by the illicit ti-ade in which some of the