s than any quiet, retiring Daphne of the
rural district. She soon became the wife of a well-to-do country
store-keeper, and made his home a pandemonium, which ended by him
employing a regular lawyer to procure a divorce, when the foregoing
facts were elicited.

CHAPTER XVIII.

BLACK-MAIL.

_Who Practice it, How it is Perpetrated, and upon Whom--The Birds who
are Caught and the Fowlers who Ensnare them--With other Interesting
Matters on the same Subject_.

There is a class of crimes prevalent in the metropolis, which, from its
secret character and the apparent respectability of those engaged in it,
rarely ever sees the light of exposure. Some of these offenses are
hushed through the influence or prominence of the operators. In others
the facts are never divulged, because the victims prefer to suffer loss
rather than have their names dragged into a publicity which, to say the
least, would reflect on them discreditably. For these, and other obvious
reasons, many kinds of secret crimes flourish and abound in the esoteric
life of great cities. In New York, where money is often rapidly
acquired, and where little curiosity is manifested as to the mode of its
acquisition, there are naturally many facilities for putting
black-mailing schemes into successful operation. Scores of persons,
apparently respectable, are constantly on the alert to discover
compromising facts in connection with persons of wealth. Words dropped
from ordinary conversations, hints and allusions overheard, form a clue,
which, followed up and reported in a broadly compromising form to the
pecunious person concerned, will, in the majority of instances, induce
him to imitate the _role_ of the coon that preferred to "come down"
rather than be shot at.

Experienced New Yorkers need not be told that there has existed among us
for years a class of individuals whose only source of revenue is
black-mail. Ever on the _qui vive_ for real scandal or its counterfeit
presentment, these cormorants levy tribute upon both sexes. The high and
haughty dame, with a too appreciative and wandering eye; the wealthy
banker, with a proclivity for "little French milliners;" the Christian
husband, with a feminine peccadillo; the pew-owner at church, with a
disposition to apply St. Paul's "holy kiss" a little too literally; and
the saintly pastor with a skeleton in his closet, are all alike fish in
the tribute net of this insatiable toiler of the turbid sea of scandal.

No