"_Dear Madam_,-- "I tried to get you on the wire, but could not get you. Kindly send Miss Viola, the pretty little blonde, over at 2.30, not later if possible, on Monday afternoon (to-morrow) without fail--this is a good engagement. "Also send me another pretty young girl and accommodating at 1.30 sharp. Now please do not disappoint me.[39] "Signed (Mrs.) ---- "Sunday, May 28th." Call-houses are usually cozy and homelike, presided over by a woman who dwells upon her efforts to make her customers happy and comfortable. She declares that there are so many "nice respectable men" who are lonely in a big city and who want places where they will feel absolutely safe, where they can meet pretty girls, spend the evening, and get a few drinks. The stock in trade of such a house is usually a collection of photographs of the girls who are "on call." In addition, the madame exhibits a description of them, with measurements to show their physical development; the prices are appended. Her victims are variously procured: sometimes in restaurants frequented by girls who are employed in offices and stores: again, her place of operation may be the ladies' retiring room, where she enters into conversation with girls, inviting them to a meal or to spend an evening in her apartment. If she sees a girl alone at a table, she asks whether she may sit down with her and urges her to have a "little drink." Thus acquaintance springs up and "dates" are made for the theater, the madame paying the bill. At other times she goes to a department store and selects a girl, from whom she makes her purchases. The girl may be flattered by evidences of interest and friendship, or tempted by the prospects of fine clothes, leisure, and opportunities for pleasure. The danger is especially great if she has previously lapsed. On certain streets on the East Side below 14th Street and in Harlem there are a number of cider "stubes" in the basement of tenement houses. In these "stubes" foreign girls act as waitresses, serving small glasses of cider or other soft drinks to customers. While serving, the girls solicit their customers to enter small rooms in the rear of the basement. The keepers of these "stubes" are constantly advertising in the foreign papers published in New York for waitresses, offering to pay five or six dollars a week for such service. There is no doubt that many ignorant foreign girls are thus lured into lives of prostitution. One keeper who had a waitress about 38 years of age told the investigator that she expected to have two or three young girls in a few days. Another proprietor tried to secure the custom of the investigator by saying that he expected to secure two nice young girls for his "stube." Both were advertising in a German paper for help at the time. Such an advertisement for a very disreputable "stube" on East 4th Street appeared in a German newspaper on March 29, April 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, and 19.