rheard a business consultation between the two members of such
a firm; and that such partnerships _do_ exist, and that by their
means hundreds of ignorant young women, of the lower classes, are
every year betrayed to their moral ruin, I no more doubt than I
doubt the rotundity of the earth.

If the illustrious woman who is the subject of the present
chapter should ever surmise that the foregoing observations are
intended to have a personal application to herself, the author
will give her much more credit for sagacity and discernment than
he did for supernatural wisdom.

Madame Leander Lent is one of the most shrewd, unscrupulous, and
dirty of all the goodly sisterhood of New York witches. She has
so great a run of customers that her doors are often besieged by
anxious inquirers as early as eight o'clock in the morning, and
the servant is frequently puzzled to find room and chairs to
accommodate the shame-faced throng, till her ladyship sees fit to
get out of bed and begin the labors of the day. She is then
impartial in the distribution of her favors; the audiences are
governed by barber-shop rules, and the visitors are admitted to
the presence in the order of their coming, and any one going out
forfeits his or her "turn" and on returning must take position at
the tail end of the queue.

The Fates show no favoritism.

The quarter in which Madame Lent has domiciled herself and her
familiars, is by no means in the most aristocratic part of the
city. "Mulberry," is the pomological name of the street, and it
has never been celebrated for its cleanliness or for its
eligibility as a site for princely mansions. In fact it has
been, on the whole, rather neglected by that class of society who
generally indulge in palatial luxuries.

Hercules, in his capacity of an amateur scavenger, once attempted
the cleaning of the Augean stables, or some such trifle, and his
success was trumpeted throughout the neighborhood as a triumph of
ingenuity and perseverance. If Hercules would come to Gotham and
try his hand at the purgation of Mulberry Street, our word for
it, he would, in less than a week, knock out his brains with his
own club in utter despair.

There never yet were swine with stomachs strong enough to feed
upon the garbage of its gutters, or with instincts so perverted
as to wallow in its filth. Dogs, lean and wild-eyed, the outcasts
of the canine world, sometimes, driven by sore stress of hunger,
sneak here with drooping