We are apt to look to the Old World exclusively for startling contrasts between fashion and splendor on the one hand, and squalid wretchedness and crime on the other. With an air of complacency, we speak of our great and happy republic, as affording a retreat for the homeless, and a refuge for the oppressed. Yet, in the face of all this, it would be difficult to find in any European city a more thoroughly vicious district than that of the Five Points in New York. Few, doubtless, of the fashionable crowds who daily promenade Broadway, have ever penetrated its recesses,—few but would shrink in dismay from horrors of which they had not even dreamed, if they should do so. But it is not our purpose to moralize upon that which has already begun to attract the attention, and inspire the exertions, of philanthropic hearts and hands. That task we leave to abler pens. Enough that we have hinted at the character of the locality in which our story takes its rise. One of the worst recesses of this notorious district enjoys the singularly euphonious name of “Cow Bay.” The entrance to it is a filthy arched passage-way, round which are crowded miserable tenements; so miserable, that the scanty sunlight, which finds its way through the dirt-begrimed windows, seems to shrink away, as if it were more than half ashamed of the company it is in. In front of these houses, you may see men whose faces betray no evidence of intelligence or virtue; women whose miserable and woe-begone expression, perchance loud voice and angry vituperation, attest that from them all that renders the sex attractive has for ever departed; children—and this is the saddest sight of all—dirty and sickly, and who are children only in size and in years; for upon their hearts the happy influences of genuine childhood have never fallen. For them, alas! life is a rough pathway, paved with flinty stones, which pierce their feet at every step. A tall man, with a shambling gait, and hat drawn over his eyes, walked swiftly through the arched passage-way above alluded to, and, muttering an imprecation upon a child who got in his way, entered one of the houses, whose front door stood invitingly open, and, groping his way up the staircase, which was quite obscure, although it was mid-day, opened a door at the head of the staircase, and entered.