, the dance hall.

CHAPTER II.

FROM THE BALL-ROOM TO THE GRAVE.

Let me tell you a true story which will illustrate this point.

It was a Saturday night in the month of December, in the year '91. The
girls who toil daily in the stores and shops on Spring street were
hastening to their homes after the long week of toil. As they pass along
we notice among them the tall, graceful figure of a young woman who
seems to be the favorite of the group of girls about her. She is a
handsome blonde of nineteen years, with a face as sweet and loving as
that of an angel.

She was born in a country town in New England, of respectable parents.
Her mother died while she was yet but a little girl, leaving her to the
care of a devoted father, who, with loving interest, reared and educated
her.

After the completion of her education she entered a printing office, to
serve an apprenticeship, but the close confinement, following, as it
did, in close proximity to the confinement of the school room, soon
undermined her health and a change of climate was prescribed. The father
felt he could not part from her even for a few months, but as it seemed
for her good, he reluctantly consented to her going to Los Angeles, the
"City of the Angels," for a year.

It was a sad day for both when that father and his only daughter parted.
Little could he know of the fate that was in store for his pure and
loving child in the far West. Little did he think when she kissed him an
affectionate farewell, and told him she would return in just one year,
that he would never see her smiling face again. Nor did she dream that
she was journeying to her doom; that far beyond the mountains she should
be laid to rest 'neath the sod of mother earth.

But to return to the scene on Spring street.

As the little group pass up the street her very beautiful face does not
escape the notice of the crowd of idlers gathered on the corners gazing
impudently at the passers by.

Among these idlers is one of the city's most popular society gentlemen
and ball-room devotees, and we hear him mutter to himself as he stares
impudently at her pretty face: "Ah, my beauty, I shall locate _your_
dwelling place later on. You are too fine a bird to be lost sight of."

He follows her to her lodging, and day by day studies her habits.

He discovers that she goes nowhere except to her daily toil and to
church. He visits the church, and finding no opportunity to approach her
the