Vile, very vile, are the men and women who constitute the population of divedom, but how about the representatives of respectability, who come among them to spend their "good time" with them?
Were I at liberty to give the names of men whom I have seen hobnobbing with the most fearful riff-raff, you would shrug your shoulders and say: "I cannot believe it of them." Yet, I do not lie.
There is no need for lying, and there is much corroboration, not the least being the conscience of those men.
We want you—you men and women of respectability—to come to these "dives," but we want you to come for another purpose. Even at this very moment there is a scope for your efforts in spite of all change of administration and Christian endeavor has done for that part of the city. The stamping out of vice is carried on vigorously, but vice is a proverbially obstinate disease.
Only a few nights ago I saw a scene in a widely known pest hole, reeking with stench beyond its very doors, which I can only hint at in describing it.
At one of the tables sat a youth, a mere boy, who had been coaxed into the dirty hole by the persuasion of the wily "barker" at the side door. The boy seemed from the country, his ruddy complexion and "store clothes" indicated it. The drink, which he had been forced to buy, was standing untasted before him. Without being afraid, he kept wide awake and resented all overtures made to him. But he looked too much like an easy victim to escape the usual procedure.
Before he was aware of it, a woman had dropped into the chair on the other side of the table. At least more than fifty years of age, the toothless wretch assumed the coquetry of a young girl.
The gray hair, devoid of comb or ribbon, hung in straggling strands to her shoulders. The front of her dress was unbuttoned. Still, this witch of lowest depravity, lulled her Lorelei song, hoping to transfix the gaze of the boy—young enough perhaps to be her grandson—by the leer of her bleary eyes.
I do not dare, and if I dared, could not tell you the horridness of this scene, yet it was only a detail in the grander spectacle, the "good time," seen and enjoyed nightly by thousands of the "better" class.
Forerunners of the eventually coming overthrow of "open" vice made themselves felt during some of the more important elections and for a few weeks preceding election day the ukase was sent out by the mysterious hidden powers: "Lie low for a while."