"Hundreds of 'Lost Children' bear testimony to the carelessness of mothers and nurses who are more intent on other business, when their charges stray off to be found afterwards in out of the way places by stray policemen. Quite often a pedestrian will notice, on going along one of our side streets, a young child, its eyes bubbling over with tears, and red from irritation and inflammation, who has strayed from its parents' residence. Sometimes it will have a stick of candy in its infantile fists, or else an apple, or a slice of bread, butter, and molasses to console it in its wanderings. It is very seldom, however, that these children do not find their way back to their parents, unless that there is foul play, as in such instances where a child may be kidnapped by people who are childless, or through their agency, for the purpose of adoption in barren families. The practice of baby-farming has not as yet attained, in America, the height that it has reached in England, and therefore the lives of children are not yet so endangered as they are across the water. It is calculated that at least one thousand children are missing every year in this city, but they are nearly all returned before the close of the day on which they are first missed."
THE DENS OF MIDNIGHT.
"If the thousand and one noisome crannies, nooks, and dens of this great city could be exposed to view, day after day, the bodies of many a missing man and woman might be found festering and rotting, or their bones bleaching for want of decent burial. Where do the bodies come from that are fished up, bloated and disfigured, night after night, by the harbor police, in haunts of the docks and from the slime of the Hudson? It is fearful to think of men influenced by liquor, who, with their gold watches, pocket-books, and other valuables exposed in the most foolish manner, are to be seen, night after night, in the dens and hells of this great, sinful city. Many of these men are from far off country villages and happy homes, and when thrown into our streets at night under the flare of the gas lamps, and among crowds of showily dressed women, whose feet are ever downward into the abyss, it becomes almost impossible for them to resist the thousand and one meretricious temptations that are placed before them."
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 down town. 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 loth, 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 villainous 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 water, 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 maiden, 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, and her life, peaceful and happy, with no greater excitement than the Sunday prayer-meeting, 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 pure as the undriven snow. One night she takes a midnight sleigh ride on the road, and they stop at a fashionable-looking restaurant in Harlem Lane or on the road. She is persuaded to take a glass of champagne. She is finally persuaded 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 gnawed 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. [Footnote: New York World.]
CHAPTER LXXVI.
CONCLUSION.
Our task is done. We have told, as far as we are capable of telling, the secrets of this great and growing city. Our purpose has been two- fold, to satisfy a reasonable curiosity on the part of those who never have seen, and probably never will see New York, and to warn those who design visiting the city, of the dangers and temptations which await them here. We warn them earnestly to confine their visits to the numerous harmless and innocent attractions of the Metropolis, and to shun those other, darker quarters of the city, which are but so many gateways to the paths that lead down to ruin and death.