When the downtown basement resorts close, the profitable work of the all night joints commences. The attendants in them are joined by squads from the more pretentious and less favored half-night competitors. These resorts, as a rule, are all equipped with private rooms, and many of them, in summer, have a so-called garden attached. Some have vaudeville performances to attract crowds, which end after the midnight hour. Many have a "Ladies' Entrance," but most visitors pass through the bar to the sitting room beyond. The so-called music of the cracked piano and strident male voices now commences, and the hat is passed around by the artists and performers, for contributions for payment for their services, the "house" paying nothing for such services, but permitting the artists to "work" the crowd. Boys of sixteen, and under, join in the gaieties as buck, wing and jig dancers, and also pass the hat. As the hours lengthen, as the liquor begins its effect, freedom of action enlarges, and restraint is removed. Those attitudes at table indicative of respectability are abandoned for others hinting at the widest license, or actually, which is not infrequently the case, illustrating that license, so far as familiarities of the person are concerned. The dance begins, with all its contortions of the body derived from the couche-couchee exhibitions of the World's Fair times, enlarged upon by the grossness of the two-step waltz of the slums. Strolling bands of negro musicians, scraping the violin and strumming the guitar and mandolin, or the home orchestra, composed of these dusky minstrels, add their alleged harmonies to the occasion, and, with nasal expression, roll of coon songs in the popular rag time, with their intimations of free love, warmth of passion and disregard of moral teachings. At times, with assumed pathos and mock dignity they warble a sentimental song with some allusion to "Mother," "Home," or "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me." The spree goes on, with fresh additions from the bagnios. Women with the most repulsive signs of prolonged dissipation, of advanced disease, with the upper parts of the body exposed, not perhaps more than is customary at a fashionable charity ball, join in with salacious abandon. These women, in the phrase of the Bard of Avon, belong to the class of the "custom shrunk," of one of whom a Roman satirist wrote: "* * * but now, That life is flagging at the goal, and like An unstrung lute, her limbs are out of tune, She is become so lavish of her presence, That being daily swallowed by men's eyes They surfeit at the sight. She's grown companion to the common streets-- Want her who will, a stater, a three obolo piece, Or a mere draught of wine, brings her to hand! Nay! place a silver stiver in your palm, And, shocking tameness! She will stoop forthwith To pick it out."