ed husband would procure,
through the offices of a mutual friend, an introduction for his wife to
some prominent member of the Stock Exchange. The lady, who was a
remarkably handsome, fascinating and wily woman, usually entangled the
intended victim in the snare. Then the Husband appeared on the scene,
boiling with indignation and "breathing threatenings and slaughter"
until money was paid. The gentleman so entrapped might afterwards
complain to his friend who introduced him to the siren, but he would
never dream of associating him in the "crooked" transaction.

We are not alarmists by any means, but simply relate facts as they have
come within our personal knowledge. The weakness of human nature,
combined with the play of the passions, especially the passion of love,
renders the existence of the black-mailer possible and often profitable.
In a city like ours, where such freedom is accorded to young wives and
demoiselles, it is not surprising that machinations against their virtue
and their honor are planned and executed.

The picture has still another side. What does the reader think, for
example, of a mother who has three daughters,--bright, beautiful little
girls, with long braided hair hanging down their shapely backs, large,
lustrous, melting eyes; childish, innocent-looking lambs, aged
respectively thirteen, fifteen and seventeen,--and sends them on the
street in the afternoons, exquisitely and temptingly dressed, in order
to capture susceptible elderly gentlemen? Yet these bewitching little
girls have been often seen in the neighborhood of Madison Square, on
Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and even down on Wall street. Their mother would
follow them at a distance, keeping them in view all the time. When
accosted by a gentleman, which happened every day, their mother would
follow them, watch the man when he came out of the house or hotel with
one of her daughters, and the next day visit him, saying he had
destroyed her young and beautiful daughter, and so on, and that she was
going to have him arrested. This species of black-mail is not so
uncommon as it would seem, even the fathers of young and prepossessing
girls are partners in these affairs.

As a fact there is nothing that devilish ingenuity can devise to entice
men and women into committing every kind of crime that is not practiced
by the blackmailers of this city, and many are the fish that are landed
and great the booty that is secured.

CHAPTER XIX.

AB