al with a
motley collection of gentlemen of undoubted reputation--thieves,
vagabonds, homeless wretches, and others of the same stamp, among whom
were some of the most miserable looking objects possible to be
conceived.

At the moment of Frank's entrance, Ragged Pete was engaged in relating
the particulars of a horrible event which had occurred upon the
preceding night on the 'Points.' The incident is a _true_ one, and we
introduce it here to show what awful misery exists in the very midst of
all our boasted civilization and benevolence:--

'You see, fellers,' said Ragged Pete, leisurely sipping a gill of _blue
ruin_, which he held in his hand--'the victim was a woman of the town,
as lived upstairs in Pat Mulligan's crib in this street. She had once
been a decent woman, but her husband was a drunken vagabond, as beat and
starved her to such an extent, that she was obliged to go on the town to
keep herself from dying of actual starvation. Well, the husband he was
took up and sent to quod for six months, as a common vagrant; and the
wife she lived in Mulligan's crib, in a room as hadn't a single article
of furniture in it, exceptin' a filthy old bed of straw in one corner. A
week ago, the poor cretur was taken ill, and felt herself likely to
become a mother, but the brutes in the house wouldn't pay no attention
to her in that situation, but left her all to herself. What she must
have suffered during that night and the next day, you can imagine; and
towards evening Pat Mulligan goes to her room, and finds her almost
dead, with her poor child in her arms, wrapped up in an old blanket.
Well, what does Pat do but ax her for his rent, which she owed him; and
because the poor woman had nothing to pay him, the Irish vagabond (axing
your pardon, Bloody Mike,) bundles her neck and crop into the street,
weak and sick as she was, with a hinfant scarce a day old, crying in her
arms. The weather was precious cold, and it was snowing, and to keep
herself and child from freezing to death, as she thought, she crept into
a hog-pen which stands in Pat's yard. And this morning she was found in
the hog-pen, stone dead, and the hogs were devouring the dead body of
the child, which was already half ate up! I'll tell you what, fellers,'
exclaimed Ragged Pete, dashing a tear from his eye, and swallowing the
remainder of his gin--'I'm a hard case myself, and have seen some hard
things in my time, but d----n me if the sight of that poor woman's