hoot a bullet into the City of Churches. I have not told
the half, no, nor the tenth, of what we saw at his place. It can not be
told. There is no newspaper would dare print it. There is no writer who
could present it in shape for publication. It can only be hinted at.
There is beastliness and depravity under his roof compared with which no
chapter in the world's history is equal.

"Involuntarily, when I reached my apartment, I turned into the bath-room
and bathed my face and hands. It was like getting a breath of heaven
after experiencing a foretaste of sheol."

CHAPTER XXIII.

OUR WASTE BASKET.

_Contemporaneous Records and Memoranda of Interesting Cases._

*Miss Ruff's Tribulations.*

Miss Louise Ruff was a tall, fair-complexioned young lady of twenty-two,
with a handsome form, lovely shoulders, handsome arms and bewitching
address. Her family was well known on the east side of the town, and she
had received a fairly liberal education. Miss Ruff, two or three years
previous to the legal proceedings here chronicled, had the good or bad
fortune to form the acquaintance of Mr. Julius Westfall, the well-to do
proprietor of a couple of restaurants. Mr. Westfall was a Teutonic
"masher" with which any Venus would have been justified in falling in
love. He was a brunette with hyacinthine locks and lustrous black eyes,
and with hands and feet too pretty, almost, for use. Mr. Julius Westfall
fell violently in love with Louise. She had dropped in with a lady
friend to drink a cup of coffee. From behind the receipt of custom he
took an observation, and then he began to prance round, as one who had
suddenly been attacked by a combination of the fire of St. Anthony and
the dance of St. Vitus. He skipped around the saloon like a grasshopper
on a gravel lot, and smiled, and smiled, and smiled--looking his
Fourth-of-July prettiest. Of course Miss Ruff nudged her companion above
the fifth rib, and whispered something complimentary to the beaming
proprietor; and when the ladies left, he bowed them out with all the
grace of a Belgravia footman.

Mr. Westfall began to watch for Louise and to trot after her like a
doppelganger. He kept a tub of ice-water in a closet, in which he
occasionally bathed his throbbing temples. He was devoured by a
consuming passion. When he beheld her at a distance, he smacked his lips
like a beautiful leopard. The heart of Miss Ruff was not of adamant. It
was not a trap-rock paving stone. She cou