From the original publication: The good people of Gotham seem to possess an irresistible desire to change their residences on the first of May annually, and the ludicrous scenes produced by everybody, and everybody’s furniture, being in the street at the same time, has been the subject of many a humorous poem and laughable prose sketch. Our artist has taken his cue from life, and the mad scene he has given us below is no exaggeration upon the actual truth. Porters, draymen, men, women and children, horses and carts, dogs and pigs, all seem licensed on this day to ran wild and unrestrained; but, to appreciate the picture, one must have been in New York on the first of May, and run the risk of his life, by being run over and trampled upon by the motley crowd of men and animals. In New England now, the first of May is a sort of rural holiday, when people go into the country for a breath of fragrant and pure air, and to join each other in the festivities often of dancing about the May pole as they used to do in olden times, and as we illustrated in our last number. The first of May in the city of New York is a very different occasion.