Year: 1868




Instances may be related of how meH
disappear and are never heard of to be
recognized. A well-to-do person from
Ohio, who has never visited New York
before, pays a visit to this city, and
stopping at downtown hotel, sallies
out in the evening in search of what he
has been taught by his limited course Of
reading to call adventures" He be,
lieves, in his Ohio simplicity, that be
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 look at the "Black Crook" OF
"White Fawn," or "Genevieve de Bra
bant," 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 signal to him
that cannot be mistaken, and our Ohio
friend, rather astonished at the freedom
of the aristecratic and well-bred ladies
of the metropolis, but nothing 10th,
hastens to her side, and accompanies
her to her richly voluptuous mansion in
Beecker, 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 villainous countenance,
posing knifefor plunge in his neck.
The work is done quickly, barrel well
packed, or furniture chest, placed in a
carriage at night, can be taken up the
Hudson River road and thence dropped
in the river, and after day or so the
head of another dead man will be found
eddying and floating around the rolling
piers near the battery, his face pulp,
and no longer recognizable. The sun
shines down on the FLASHING waters, but
the eyes are sightless, and never another
sun can dim their brilliancy or splendor.
1t is only another missing man without
watch, pocketbook, or money on his
person.


MISERY, SHAME AND DEATH.


Another missing instance. A beauti-
full girl, born in village on the Sound,
where the waters of that inland sea
beat and play around the sandy pebbles
of land-locked inlet, is reared i'll inno-
cence and virtue until she reaches her
seventeenth year. She is as lovely as
dawn, and greater excitement than 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 Der 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
hor musical ear, and she is escorted
night after night by man with pleas
ing face and ready tongue. She is yet
white as the undriven snow. One night
she takes minight sleigh ride on the
road, and they stop at fashionable
looking restaurant in Harlem Lane or
on the road. She is persuaded to take a
glass of champagne. She is finally per-
suaded to drink an entire bottle of
champagne. That night the world is
torn from under her feet. She has
tasted the Apple of Death. She re-
turns to her peaceful home by the
silken wave. of the Sound a dishonored
woman. To hide her shame she re-
turns to New York, but her destroyer





Then the struggle begins for existence
and bread. She is y 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 lost hope, she rushes into
the streets and seeks the river. OR
lone pier she seeks refuge from her "lost
life" The night watchmau, anxious
about the cotton and rosin confided
to his charge, does not hear the cry of
"Mother" from 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 mere greenish mass
of fostering corruption. She is not
recognized, and thus fills the page de-
voted to missing people.