apers all sold, about nine or ten o'clock at night they saunter
up Chatham street, the Bowery and other thoroughfares; or, if it is the
summer season, they will be found in the City Hall park, playing,
sitting on the benches, or accosting passing pedestrians. The Battery,
too, has its frequenters, and the piers and docks at night are crowded
with them. This life they pursue until they engage regularly in a life
of shame, by becoming regular boarders in some one of the many dives in
the cellars of Chatham street, the houses of prostitution in Forsyth,
Hester, Canal, Bayard and other streets. Or, again, they may be found
in the various pretty-waiter-girl saloons of the Bowery, or such
notorious resorts as Hilly McGlory's, Owney Geoghegan's, and so on. The
public parks, however, are favorite places, and they may be found even
in Union Square and Madison Square, and sometimes in Central Park. They
enjoy themselves, too, for they are often seen on picnics in summer and
at balls during the winter. They have their favorites among the opposite
sex, too, just as have more favored and aristocratic females. For the
love of one of these little girls--Mary Maguire--a member of the
notorious Mackerelville gang met a tragic end, at the hands of a jealous
rival in City Hall park, by being stabbed to death. Little Mary was only
fourteen years of age. She was afterwards sent to the House of the Good
Shepherd.

Newsboys are largely responsible for leading girls of this class into
the tempting paths of vice. In purchasing their papers at the newspaper
offices, generally in cellars, they are subjected to many indignities
and familiarities, which, at first resented, are gradually accepted as a
matter of course. Once the descent is begun, the journey is completed by
outsiders, until the girls become corrupt and unscrupulous, with a
knowledge of the ways of the world that would surprise many a matronly
head.

In many cases, girls of five and six years are sent out as decoys by the
larger ones to "rope in" customers; for detectives and agents of the
various societies, on the lookout for depraved girls, teach those young
Messalinas caution. When one of these smaller girls has secured a
customer she pilots the way to the place where the larger ones are to be
found. In one instance this was a cellar, under ground, not fifty feet
from the corner of Chatham and William streets; outwardly an oyster
saloon, but a door opened in a wooden partition, th