The successful perpetration of this bold robbery suggested to a number of idle men the idea of robbing the freight cars as they remained apparently unguarded on the tracks in the vicinity of the West Thirtieth street station, and led to the formation of the notorious Tenth Avenue gang. The cars arriving from the west and other points loaded with valuable goods and merchandise, offered facilities of a most tempting kind to the members of this gang, and large quantities nightly disappeared until, week after week, the goods stolen aggregated thousands of dollars loss to the railroad company. The proximity of the river aided the operations of this gang very materially, for much of the goods were spirited away with the assistance of the river thieves and their boats, both sets of thieves acting, of course, in collusion. It is a very difficult thing to map out just the precise localities where criminals reside now, owing, in a great measure, to the efficiency of the present police, who keep evil-doers under constant surveillance, preventing them remaining long in any one place. Of course, such streets as are contained in wards of the city where the poorest people dwell will invariably have their quota of questionable characters; but the days when gangs of roughs, "toughs" or thieves can flourish in one particular section, it is to be hoped, are matters of the past. It is a matter of surprise to other nations, and of congratulation to ourselves, that at the present such crimes against persons and property as burglary, pocket-picking and highway robbery are much rarer in proportion than in any other cosmopolitan city in the world. CHAPTER III. STREET ARABS OF BOTH SEXES. _The Pretty Flower and News Girls--The Young Wharf Rats and their Eventful Lives--How they all Live, where they Come From, and where they finally Finish their Career._ To the wealthy resident of Fifth avenue and other noted fashionable thoroughfares, the incidents of actual every-day life that are here revealed will read like a revelation. To the merchant and the business man they may probably read like romance. To the thrifty mechanic, however, who occupies a vastly different social sphere, who hurries to his work in the morning, and with equal haste seeks to reach his home at night, this chapter may, perhaps, cause a tear to glisten in his manly eye when the facts, here written for the first time, meet his gaze, and, may be, are associated with some young male or female relation or friend who has "gone wrong." But to the officers of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and other kindred useful societies, newspaper men, the police, and others whose daily vocations happen to keep them out late o' nights, the truths here unfolded are of too frequent occurrence and are too familiar sights to need any other corroborative evidence than is supplied by their own experience and the exercise of their own observation.