There was a corner café with a score of well-dressed women sitting at the tables, but no men. They seemed social as I passed by and beckoned me in. When I went on they followed me with a loose collection of Spanish, French, German and English oaths. That was the only way they could follow, for there was a man on horseback at the street corner prepared to run them in if they ventured out. It was eight o’clock, we were the only ones on the street, and must have looked lorn and lonely, for in every doorway stood a besilked, bediamoned, benighted beauty who looked compassionately on and invited us to come in and make ourselves at home. A long walk brought us to a kind of Leicester Square of many theatres. Believing they were all equally good or bad, we entered one and saw and heard a Portuguese comic opera. It was comical to see some of the red light scenes we had just escaped, enacted on the stage. Again we went out of the light into the night, passing through narrow streets of dives brighter and blacker than any we had yet seen. This was the busiest place in Rio. Although it was midnight, an unending stream of humanity poured up and down the walks, the patrolling police charging the crowds time and again. I was sorry I had not seen Brazil’s “men of war” because it was foggy when we entered the harbor, but I was more sorry to see most of them gambling, drinking, going in and out of the dives along these streets. Here vice was wholly evil and lost none of its grossness. It was dirty, dowdy and depraved. Jack Falstaff would have hurried away as fast as his fat legs could carry him, and not paused to pity, endure or embrace the poor, half-dressed, painted, powdered prostitutes. There is a sharpness of teeth hiding in their cruel kisses, poison in the honey of their lips, and many a deluded lover starts up terrified as if he heard snakes hissing in their hair. Rio de Janeiro is damned with a debauchery which the natural beauty of its harbor can not redeem. On leaving Rio I met two young ladies on shipboard who told me a “white slave” story. A Buenos Aires agent for vaudeville had come to New York and booked them through his agency. He said conditions were better in South than North America; that they could each earn $50 a week, and have all expenses paid, if they would “just sing American songs.” But before landing they learned from some one who knew this agent, that gambling and wine rooms were run in connection with the theatre, and that it would be necessary for them to carry revolvers for protection. When they realized their danger and decided not to land, but board our ship for New York, they were nabbed by the police, who work hand in hand with the white slavers, and had it not been for the American consul and others interested who raised enough money for their return passage, and insisted that the contract of the agent’s false promises be broken, these two girls would have been placed in durance vile for two years, according to law.