ee. I am speaking
only of what I know. Then, again, a man or a woman gets stupidly drunk
in one of the whisky-shops. Before he or she is thrown out upon the
street, the thrifty liquor-seller 'goes through' the pockets of the
insensible wretch, and confiscates all he finds. Again, a vile woman has
robbed one of her visitors, and with the money in her pocket goes to a
dram-shop. The sum may be ten dollars or it may be two hundred. A glass
or so unlooses her tongue; she boasts of her exploit, and perhaps shows
her booty. Not once in a dozen times will she take this booty away.
If there are only a few women in the shop, the liquor-seller will most
likely pounce on her at once and get the money by force. There is no
redress. To inform the police is to give information against herself. He
may give her back a little to keep her quiet or he may not, just as he
feels about it. If he does not resort to direct force, he will manage in
some other way to get the money. I could take you to the dram-shop of a
man scarcely a stone's throw from this place who came out of the State's
prison less than four years ago and set up his vile trap where it now
stands. He is known to be worth fifty thousand dollars to-day. How did
he make this large sum? By the profits of his bar? No one believes this.
It has been by robbing his drunken and criminal customers whenever he
could get them in his power."

"I am oppressed by all this," said Mr. Dinneford. "I never dreamed of
such a state of things."

"Nor does one in a hundred of our good citizens, who live in quiet
unconcern with this pest-house of crime and disease in their midst. And
speaking of disease, let me give you another fact that should be widely
known. Every obnoxious epidemic with which our city has been visited in
the last twenty years has originated here--ship fever, relapsing fever
and small-pox--and so, getting a lodgment in the body politic, have
poured their malignant poisons into the blood and diseased the whole.
Death has found his way into the homes of hundreds of our best citizens
through the door opened for him here."

"Can this be so?" exclaimed Mr. Dinneford.

"It is just as I have said," was replied. "And how could it be
otherwise? Whether men take heed or not, the evil they permit to lie at
their doors will surely do them harm. Ignorance of a statute, a moral
or a physical law gives no immunity from consequence if the law be
transgressed--a fact that thousands learn eve