s happened,
an accomplice acts in the capacity of hackman. The drive selected is
through the principal streets. Some hotel or fashionable restaurant is
visited, and if she still successfully resists wine and wiles, it is
more than likely that she will be visited the following day by a
"detective" who will calmly inform her that he "shadowed" her yesterday.
Of course he is after money, and she pays his demand rather than permit
him to carry into execution his threat of telling her husband.

Young girls, too, are frequently compromised by the professional
"masher." This vile species of the _genus homo_ affects the fashionable
streets where he saunters in solitary splendor, waiting for an
opportunity to make the acquaintance of some young girl on her way to or
from school. If her parents happen to be wealthy, the extraction of a
neat sum follows this undesirable association; far an exposure in which
her name would in any way be associated with the adventurer's, would
forever stigmatize her in society. In some instances the immature
acquaintance has developed into an elopement, and when parental
interference followed, it was discovered that the scalawag husband was
not only ready but willing to relinquish his bride when the money
agreement was made sufficiently potent. Sometimes, again, a man is
sufficiently infatuated to marry a lady with a soiled or shady
reputation, and if that circumstance becomes known to the Knight of
Black-mail, it is morally certain that potential hush-money will be
extorted. In point of fact every kind of "skeleton," social or criminal,
if once its whereabouts be discovered and its individuality established,
becomes a source of revenue to those unscrupulous pirates of society.

It occasionally happens that black-mailers will systematically weave a
web whereby they may entangle a wealthy person. The possession of wealth
confers no exemption from the weaknesses and frailties of human nature,
and in many instances indeed the unwise use of money only brings the
obliquities of its possessor into greater prominence. It is not long
since an affluent and well-known elderly merchant of this city, walking
in the neighborhood of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, had his attention
attracted by a beautiful woman of graceful carriage and voluptuous
symmetry of form, who seemed to keep just abreast of him on the inner
sidewalk, and maintained this relative position block after block. He
was not insensible to the charm of