put on airs of purity and church-going. I know plenty of ladies who pay five hundred dollars at the store for silks and finery, which they persuade their husbands they bought for one-fourth of the price. And, for my part, I am going to eat well, dress well, and enjoy myself as long as ever I can get the money, by hook or by crook." CHAPTER V. THE PRETTY WAITER GIRL. _Concert Saloons and how they are Managed--How the Pretty Waitresses Live and upon Whom, and how the Unwary are Fleeced and Beguiled--A Midnight Visit to one of the Dives._ Readers of the works of Le Sage will recall the polite devil which the ingenious novelist releases from his captivity in a vial, for the purpose of disclosing to the world the true inwardness of society in Spain. Something of the role of this communicative imp we purpose to enact in this chapter, the subject matter of which, we may safely venture to assert, is new to at least nine-tenths of the residents of this great city. And if people, to the manner born, are unacquainted with the form and manifestations of this particular phase of crime, how much more ignorant must be those casual visitors, who only, at long intervals, are called by business, or impelled by anticipations of pleasure, to visit the Empire City? The mode of life of the merchant or business man does not bring him in contact with crime or the haunts of criminals. He may pass down Sixth avenue, or Third avenue and the Bowery, on the Elevated railroad; or through Greene, Wooster, and Bleecker streets, the Bowery, Fourth avenue, Forsythe, Canal, Thirty-fourth, Houston, Twenty-third and Chatham streets, and other thoroughfares, in a street car, knowing nothing about the inmates of the houses lining either side of those same streets, or their manner of life, or anything about those inhabiting the basement beneath. It is only when the startling head-lines in his favorite morning paper call his attention to some frightful crime committed, that he learns either of its character, or location, or the causes which produced it. To this lack of knowledge on the part of the respectable portion of the community of the location of questionable places and the haunts of felons, is to be attributed many of the robberies which, from time to time, are chronicled in the newspapers. In the case of "the stranger within our gates" the danger of straying into the sloughs of vice and consequent victimization, is of course greatly increased. And just here it is worthy of remark that there appears to be some mysterious fatality by which strangers, greenhorns and "innocents," generally, contrive to wander by unerring though devious ways, straight into the talons of vigilant night-hawks. Concert saloons and pretty waiter girls are treacherous things to meddle with. Neither can be depended upon and generally both have unsavory reputations. The only thing pretty about the girls is a pretty bad record.