purpose of the suit. At the expiration of the time allowed in such cases for an answer to the petition, no defense had been set up. The lady's lawyer thereupon moved for the appointment of a referee, as well as for counsel fee and alimony. All went smoothly, of course, for the petitioner, and in due course the decree of absolute divorce was granted to this unmarried lady, with permission for her to marry again, while the disreputable George Frederick Johnson was absolutely debarred from any such privilege. When the decree was recorded, Sadie returned to her family by the peaceful waters of the lake, and was received with open arms. She was an object of envy to the unsophisticated young ladies of the neighborhood, and of open and unbounded admiration to the young men. She had learned to dress and to put on flash airs, and her experience in vice, gilded over by this divorce sham, rendered her much more attractive metal to matrimonially-disposed Strephons than any quiet, retiring Daphne of the rural district. She soon became the wife of a well-to-do country store-keeper, and made his home a pandemonium, which ended by him employing a regular lawyer to procure a divorce, when the foregoing facts were elicited. CHAPTER XVIII. BLACK-MAIL. _Who Practice it, How it is Perpetrated, and upon Whom--The Birds who are Caught and the Fowlers who Ensnare them--With other Interesting Matters on the same Subject_. There is a class of crimes prevalent in the metropolis, which, from its secret character and the apparent respectability of those engaged in it, rarely ever sees the light of exposure. Some of these offenses are hushed through the influence or prominence of the operators. In others the facts are never divulged, because the victims prefer to suffer loss rather than have their names dragged into a publicity which, to say the least, would reflect on them discreditably. For these, and other obvious reasons, many kinds of secret crimes flourish and abound in the esoteric life of great cities. In New York, where money is often rapidly acquired, and where little curiosity is manifested as to the mode of its acquisition, there are naturally many facilities for putting black-mailing schemes into successful operation. Scores of persons, apparently respectable, are constantly on the alert to discover compromising facts in connection with persons of wealth. Words dropped from ordinary conversations, hints and allusions overheard, form a clue, which, followed up and reported in a broadly compromising form to the pecunious person concerned, will, in the majority of instances, induce him to imitate the _role_ of the coon that preferred to "come down" rather than be shot at.