With a view to learn the mystery of wearing unnatural beards, some filled with vermin, and some with ginger bread! some resembling those of Saracens, Turks and Russians, I visited Lipscomb’s near Gadsby’s, on the avenue, and M’Cubbin’s on Eighth street, and there gravely sat often for a long time, studying beards and mustaches, but in vain. At last I came home to my lodgings at MRS. TILLEY’S on Tenth street, nearly opposite Peter Force’s large library, and falling asleep in my easy armchair, a form stood before me in my dream, with mild aspect a sympathising look, she thus addressed me: “Let not thy thoughts about beards and mustaches trouble thee, because I am sent to reveal to thee the sublime mysteries of beards and mustaches. All men are created with certain propensities, and He who made them, has marked them, so that their propensities may be known as soon as the eye sees them. Euruchs have little or no beards, but a man whose disposition is Saracenic, Turkish, Tartarean, Gothic, barbarous or christian, has given him a beard in accordance with his natural disposition, But if he is like, in all respects, a goat, in smell and sensuality, a goat’s beard is given him and he wears it, leading about some frail female, dressed in silk velvet, while his wife with six small children, and one at the breast is left to starve at home. Such a man will never buy or read thy book, otherwise he will buy it. In compassion to thee, I further inform thee, that as to beards full of vermin, that circumstance is owing to the poverty of their owners, whose purses do not contain money enough to pay for a comb! Those beards which contain ginger bread, it is owing to a fact which is as well known to me, as it is to this whole city, that many of the bearded race are so poor, that I have seen twelve of them contribute a cent a piece, to purchase a large roll of ginger bread; they would then tie a cord around its centre and suspend it to the ceiling over their heads in the middle of the room, and seating themselves flat on the floor, in a circle, and in that position each one of them would catch a bite, as the ginger bread was whirled around from mouth to mouth. And although every mouth was wide open like an anaconda’s when swallowing a rabbit, yet, sometimes the roll struck the beard and got entangled in it, until the mouth was filled with the delicious morsel. The beard itself retained the roll, until some of the beard stuck to the roll. The fragments of tobacco in the beard, are to be accounted for in the same way.” I awoke, refreshed in body and in mind, having had revealed to me one of the greatest mysteries of this city. My mind is now at ease about that mystery, because I know every man I see on the avenue, by the beard he wears, whether he is civilized or savage, rich or poor. If he is able to get shaved without running in debt for shaving, he is shaved clean and smooth. Has he a beard like a goat’s; his beard proves him to be one that will stand on the left hand. And so of all the other signs, they are all revealed to me, and I, without fee, tell the reader all about it.