New York

but nothing loth, hastens to her side, and accompanies her to her richly voluptuous mansion in Bleecker, Green, Mercer, or Crosby streets. In the watches of the night he awakens to find the aristocratic lady fastened on his throat, and a male friend of hers, with a villainous countenance, poising a knife for a plunge in his neck. The work is done quickly, a barrel well packed, or a furniture chest, placed in a carriage at night, can be taken up the Hudson River road and there dropped in the river, and after a day or so the head of another dead man will be found eddying and floating around the rolling piers near the Battery, his face a pulp, and no longer recognizable. The sun shines down on the plashing water, but the eyes are sightless, and never another sun can dim their brilliancy or splendor. It is only another missing man without watch, pocket-book, or money on his person." MISERY, SHAME, AND DEATH. Another missing instance. A beautiful maiden, born in a village on the Sound, where the waters of that inland sea beat and play around the sandy pebbles of a land-locked inlet, is reared in innocence and virtue until she reaches her seventeenth year. She is as lovely as the dawn, and her life, peaceful and happy, with no greater excitement than the Sunday prayer-meeting, has never been tainted by the novelty of desire. At seventeen, she visits New York for the first eventful time in her life. She is dazzled with its theatres, its balls, its Central Park, the Broadway confuses and intoxicates her, but opera has divine charms for her musical ear, and she is escorted night after night by a man with a pleasing face and a ready tongue. She is yet pure as the undriven snow. One night she takes a midnight sleigh ride on the road, and they stop at a fashionable-looking restaurant in Harlem Lane or on the road. She is persuaded to take a glass of champagne. She is finally persuaded to drink an entire bottle of champagne. That night the world is torn from under her feet. She has tasted of the apples of death. She returns to her peaceful home by the silken waves of the Sound a dishonored woman. To hide her shame she returns to New York, but her destroyer has gone--she knows not whither. Then the struggle begins for existence and bread. She is a seamstress, a dry-goods clerk, but her shame finds her out when an infant is born to her, unnamed. One night, hungry, and torn with the struggle of a lost hope, she rushes into the streets and seeks the river. On a lone pier she seeks refuge from her 'lost life.' The night-watchman, anxious about the cotton and rosin confided to his charge, does not hear the cry of 'Mother' from a despairing girl, or the plunge into the gloomy, silent river below. She is not found for days after, and then her once fair face is gnawed threadbare with the incisors of crabs, and the once white neck, rounded as a pillar of glory, is a mere greenish mass of festering corruption She is not recognized, and thus fills the page devoted to missing people. CHAPTER LXXVI. CONCLUSION. Our task is done. We have told, as far as we are capable of telling, the secrets of this great and growing city. Our purpose has been two- fold, to satisfy a reasonable curiosity on the part of those who never have seen, and probably never will see New York, and to warn those who design visiting the city, of the dangers and temptations which await them here. We warn them earnestly to confine their visits to the numerous harmless and innocent attractions of the Metropolis, and to shun those other, darker quarters of the city, which are but so many gateways to the paths that lead down to ruin and death.