In company with Captain Allaire and Detective
Finn, the writer once made a tour of inspection through these
establishments. One of them shall serve as a specimen. Descending
through a rickety door-way, we passed into a room about sixteen feet
square and eight feet high. At one end was a stove in which a fire
burned feebly, and close by a small kerosene lamp on a table dimly
lighted the room. An old hag, who had lost the greater part of her nose,
and whose face was half hidden by the huge frill of the cap she wore, sat
rocking herself in a rickety chair by the table. The room was more than
half in the shadow, and the air was so dense and foul that I could
scarcely breathe. By the dim light I could see that a number of filthy
straw mattresses were ranged on the floor along the wall. Above these
were wooden bunks, like those of a barracks, filled with dirty beds and
screened by curtains. The room was capable of accommodating at least
twenty persons, and I was told that the hag in the chair, who was the
proprietress, was "a good hand at packing her lodgers well together." It
was early, but several of the beds were occupied. The curtains were
drawn in some cases, and we could not see the occupants. In one,
however, was a child, but little more than a baby, as plump and ruddy,
and as fair-skinned and pretty as though it had been the child of a lady
of wealth. The little one was sleeping soundly, and, by a common
instinct, we gathered about its bed, and watched it in silence.

"It is too pretty a child for such a place," said one of the party.

I glanced at Detective Finn. His face wore a troubled expression.

"A man becomes hardened to the sights I see," he said in answer to my
glance, "but I can scarcely keep the tears from my eyes when I see a
child like this in such a place; for, you see, I know what a life it is
growing up to."

This wretched place Mr. Finn told us was one of the best of all the bed
houses. He proved his assertion by conducting us to one out of which we
beat a hasty retreat. The night air never seemed so pure to me as it did
as I came out of the vile den into the clear starlight. I could scarcely
breathe in the fearful hole we had just been in, and yet it was rapidly
filling up with people who were to pass the night there. There were men,
women and children, but they were all huddled together in one room.
There was no such thing as privacy. Some of the lodgers were simply
unfortunat