Virtue is slain there every night. Hearts are broken there and lives ruined. It is no worse than other places of the same type.
It is an underground hell.
Down the steps we go and enter.
We are escorted to a table by a colored waiter.
On a raised dais, a bent-over consumptive looking young man plays a piano. The airs are the popular hits of the day.
A pale-faced youth wipes his purple lips after a hasty sip at a beer glass and advancing to the front of the dais sings a song, usually of sensuous import.
He is extravagantly applauded. He is “sent up” a drink by some pleased patron.
But look about you.
There are more than one hundred tables. At each table sit at least one man and one woman.
In every woman’s face, if you are observant, is written a tragedy, either beginning that night, or in its unfolding or finished years before.