hing but ashes and desolation. It is a
great mistake to imagine that these kept women are without friends and
debarred from society. On the contrary, their acquaintance, if not
select, is numerous. They are useful, good-looking, piquant, tasteful
and vivacious. Many of them have more than one lover, and conduct their
amours with singular _finesse_, generally escaping detection. They are
rarely possessed of more than a smattering of education, because their
ranks are recruited from a class where education is not in vogue. They
are not, as a rule, disgusted with their mode of living--most of them
consider it as a means to an end, and in no measure degrading or
polluting. Most of them look forward to marriage and a certain state in
society as their ultimate lot. Many of these women reside in the most
fashionable apartment houses up-town, and successfully conceal their
shame from the inquisitive eye of the respectable matron. They may also
be seen in the most fashionable hotels and boarding houses, while they
have even crept in as members of institutions and organizations which
were incepted solely for the benefit of high-toned and virtuous women.
Moreover, they are to be seen in boxes at the theatre and the opera, and
in almost every accessible place where wealthy and fashionable people
congregate. In point of fact, through the potent influence of their more
or less wealthy protector, they possess the open sesame to all places
where admittance is not secured by vouchers, and in many instances those
apparently insuperable barriers fall before their indorser's tact and
address.

CHAPTER XIII.

PASSION'S SLAVES AND VICTIMS.

_A Matter of Untold History--The Terrible Machinery of the Law as a
Means of Persecution--Edwin James's Rascality_.

Our practice has furnished many illustrations of Thackeray's shrewd
remark, that "Most men have sailed near the dangerous isles of the
Sirens at some time of their lives, and some have come away thence
wanting a strait-waistcoat." The following is a case in point, which
occurred in the time of the Tweed _regime_. The position, wealth and
influence of the somewhat mature Lothario, backed by the more or less
corrupt judiciary of those days, prevented the ventilation of this most
remarkable and sensational scandal of our times in the newspapers. Begun
as a piquant flirtation, the intimacy, so far as the principal actor was
concerned, traversed all the stages between bliss and rapture o