Youthful vice and depravity, of all grades, is, unfortunately, the natural result of that civilization which finds its outgrowth in large and necessarily closely-packed communities. Where ground is dear, poor people must seek rooms in dwellings where the rent is cheap, and these dwellings are, for the most part, erected in cheap neighborhoods--and cheap neighborhoods mean questionable companionships and associations, and bad associations beget a familiarity with immorality of all kinds. No one can question the truth of this. For instance, the honest and industrious mechanic, receiving fair wages for his work, must hire lodgings or rooms in some tenement; he goes to work during the day, leaving his wife, if he happens to have one, at home to perform those hard household duties which fall to the lot of her class; the children--and there are generally several, for one of the chief luxuries within the reach of the poor is children--are allowed to take care of themselves as best they can between times; they naturally go to the streets to play; they have no gardens, with shady graveled walks running between beds of bright flowers; no nursery, no governesses, no nurses with French caps, and, shame be it said, hardly any public parks; there are not even trees in this great city to cast a shade for these little creatures in summer nor to help break the force of the wind in winter--but they play in the streets just the same, and are under no restraint whatever, and therein lies their temptation. What wonder that they afterwards people the gilded palaces of vice "up-town," or fill the prisons of the city and state? They may be approached by any one, and they are led away by many. Sometimes the ever-watchful and lynx-eyed Chinaman singles out some pretty little girl, on the pretense that he has some curious things to show her in his laundry. Sometimes an old, eminently respectable gentleman (?) has a package of candy for the little girls. Sometimes, again, bright-eyed young girls are attracted, like butterflies to bright flowers, to the gaudy signs of the Bowery museums. Sometimes there are other inducements, in the way of store windows, or a chance acquaintance (and they are always around, too, these obliging acquaintances), and the purchase of some trinkets, then a hotel, a room, and our little friend has eaten of the apple. But this is premature. The unconstrained freedom of the street, therefore, is undoubtedly one great source of danger to the young but there are many others which, in varying degrees, conspire to ensnare and corrupt them. So that the wonder is that so many escape rather than that so many are contaminated.