The Horror of a Breaking Dawn.
Instances may be related of how men disappear, and are never heard of to be recognized. A well-to-do person from Ohio, who had never visited New York before, pays a visit to this city, and stopping at a down-town hotel, sallies out in the evening in search of what he has been taught, by his limited course of reading to call "adventures." He believes, in his Ohio simplicity, that he will meet with a beautiful and rich young lady in New York, who, struck with his rural graces and charms, will at once accept his hand and farm. Well, he takes a look at the "Black Crook," or "White Fawn," or "Genevieve de Brabant," and, returning late to his down-town hotel, is struck by the beauty and grace of a female form that glides before him on his way thither. Pretty soon she makes a signal to him that cannot be mistaken, and our Ohio friend, rather astonished at the freedom of the aristocratic and well-bred ladies of the metropolis, but nothing loath, hastens to her side, and accompanies her to her richly voluptuous mansion in Bleecker, Green, Mercer, or Crosby Streets. In the watches of the night he awakens to find the aristocratic lady fastened on his throat, and a male friend of hers, with a villanous countenance, poising a knife for a plunge in his neck. The work is done quickly; a barrel well packed, or a furniture chest, placed in a carriage at night, can be taken up the Hudson River road, and there dropped in the river, and after a day or so the head of another dead man will be found eddying and floating around the rolling piers near the battery, his face a pulp, and no longer recognizable. The sun shines down on the plashing waters, but the eyes are sightless, and never another sun can dim their brilliancy or splendor. It is only another missing man, without watch, pocket-book, or money on his person.
Misery, Shame, and Death.
Another missing instance. A beautiful girl, born in a village on the Sound, where the waters of that inland sea beat, and play around the sandy pebbles of a land-locked inlet, is reared in innocence and virtue, until she reaches her seventeenth year. She is as lovely as the dawn, has had no excitement—but the Sunday prayer-meeting, and her life, peaceful and happy, has never been tainted by the novelty of desire. At seventeen she visits New York for the first eventful time in her life. She is dazzled with its theatres, its balls, its Central Park; the Broadway confuses and intoxicates her, but opera has divine charms for her musical ear, and she is escorted, night after night, by a man with a pleasing face and a ready tongue. She is yet white as the unstained snow. One night they take a midnight sleigh ride on the road, and stop at a fashionable-looking restaurant in Harlem Lane. She is persuaded to take a glass of champagne, and finally to drink an entire bottle of champagne. That night the world is torn from under her feet. She has tasted of the Apples of Death. She returns to her peaceful home, by the silken waves of the Sound, a dishonored woman. To hide her shame, she returns to New York; but her destroyer has gone—she knows not whither. Then the struggle begins for existence and bread. She is a seamstress, a dry-goods clerk, but her shame finds her out when an infant is born to her unnamed. One night, hungry, and torn with the struggle of a lost hope, she rushes into the streets and seeks the river. On a lone pier she seeks refuge from her "lost life." The night-watchman, anxious about the cotton and rosin confided to his charge, does not hear the cry of "Mother" from a despairing girl, or the plunge into the gloomy, silent river below. She is not found for days after, and then her once fair face is knawed threadbare with the incisors of crabs, and the once white neck, rounded as a pillar of glory, is a mere greenish mass of festering corruption. She is not recognized, and thus fills the page devoted to missing people.
Finis.
Then there are the cases of girls who disappear from their homes outside of New York, and descend into her brothels, where they find rich raiment, rich food, a merry and unceasing round of gayety, champagne and lovers, which they could never hope for where they came from. These girls leave home very often through sensuality or laziness,—for girls are lazy as well as boys,—and when missing, are generally found in brothels, which, as a general thing, they will not leave for their parents. Then there are husbands and wives who quarrel foolishly, and separate to vex each other, and are missing for years, to finally be forced into other illegal ties. And there is a case of a young man, twenty, married and rich, who leaves his wife; is gone for twelve months, and is found in New Orleans, when he tells those who find him that he has been very sick, and was forced to leave his happy home.
There is also, as it is well known, a great number of infamous houses in this city where abortion is openly practised, and where whole hecatombs of innocent children are slaughtered, to hide the shame of their guilty mothers. How many wealthy and refined girls are to be found in these slaughter-houses, concealed there to hide the evidences of their indiscretion, by their parents or relatives, whose social position would be lost did the consequences of such indiscretion show themselves? The mothers are left to die in agony, again and again; and there is no coroner's inquest or public burial; for are there not scores of obliging physicians to hush the matter up?
And then, again, our private lunatic asylums. How many men and women are spirited away to those tombs of living men, where remonstrance or clamor is useless unless the public press tracks the injury, as in the case of a well-known naval officer, who was most unjustly confined, as the investigation proved, and was only released by the agitation made by The World newspaper.