females on the floor
are excited to the wildest movements. They no longer make any attempt to
conceal their persons. Their action is shameful beyond relation. It is
climaxed by the sudden movement of eight or ten of them. As if by
concerted arrangement they denude their lower limbs and raising their
skirts in their hands above their waists go whirling round and round in
a lascivious mixture of bullet and cancan. It is all done in an instant,
and with a bang the music stops. Several of the girls have already
fallen exhausted on the floor. The lights go out in a twinkling. In the
smoky cloud we have just enough daylight to grope our way out. The big
policeman stands in the doorway. Billy McGlory himself is at the bar, to
the left of the entrance, and we go and take a look at the man. He is a
typical New York saloon-keeper--nothing more, and nothing less. A
medium-sized man, neither fleshy nor spare; he has black hair and
mustache, and a piercing black eye. He shakes hands around as if we were
obedient subjects come to pay homage to a king. He evidently enjoys his
notoriety.

"I had a chat with an old detective, who says to me about McGlory: 'He
is a Fourth-warder by birth. He has a big pull in politics, but takes no
direct part himself. He pays his way with the police, and that ends it.
I have known him for years, and 'tough' as he is, I would take his word
as quick as I would take the note of half the bank presidents of New
York. His place is in the heart of a tenement region, where there are a
great many unmarried men. Grouped around him are the rooms and haunts of
hundreds of prostitutes, with their pimps, thieves and pick-pockets who
thrive in such atmosphere. His place is head-quarters for them. These
can not be suppressed, and it is part of the police policy to leave a
few places like McGlory's where you can lay your hands on a man at any
time, rather than scatter them indiscriminately over the city.'

"We go out on Hester street. It is a narrow, dirty, filthy street. It is
the early morning--five o'clock. We had spent nearly five hours in the
den. The air was reeking with the filthy odors of the night, but it was
refreshing compared with the atmosphere we had left.

"We get in our carriage to go home.

"Three or four blocks up-town we pass Cooper Institute and the old
Mercantile Library. A stone's throw from McGlory's are the great
thoroughfares of the Bowery and Broadway. You could stand on his
house-top and s