"We went into place after place, dirty and squalid, most of them, and all very unattractive. The 'glittering place of vice' was not to be found; merely the girls, the low dance-music, and the catering to every bestial passion. MEN ASHAMED. "Many of the men were young. Almost all were well dressed and respectable looking, and, thank God, many of them were ashamed when we came in, and pulled their hats down over their eyes. We saw, not only the common sailors, but the officers, the men who command the great ships, who plan and direct the battles of the world, parading their gold braid in these dens of vice, in the company of the lowest. "The indecent postures, the short-skirted, low-necked dresses, the sensual dancing, and the frequent trips to the places behind the saloons, were nauseating and repulsive. But the heart-sorrow, the sometimes unconscious longing for something higher and better, showing through the paint and powder, the hard, sinister lines, the brazen, defiant eyes, touched my heart with the awful sorrow of it all, and I would give all I possess to be able to touch them and to help them. "I said to one poor girl, 'Do you enjoy this life?' "'Not on your life, lady,' she replied. 'We drift into it, and we can't see the way out.' "Many are totally resigned to the life. One girl said to me indifferently, 'I don't expect ever to live any other life. I'm used to it, and it's good enough now.' FORCED TO LEAVE. "In one place the barkeeper allowed me to sing to the girls, but just in the middle of my song, the proprietor came in and said something in a gruff voice to the barkeeper. The latter came over to me and apologetically said, 'Say, lady, the boss is giving me h---- for allowing this. I guess you'll have to quit.' "Two of the girls were deeply touched by what I said to them. I spoke of the wrong influence of some kind of home life. "'You're right, lady. That's so. It was that way with me. I was started wrong, and everybody helped to grease the hill I was sliding down, and I soon reached the bottom.' "The girls are decoyed by some man friend, who has so compromised the girl that she feels she is being shunned, to the house of a 'kind woman who will protect her.' She is ruined. She begins smoking and drinking and soon unless she takes great care of herself, she is sent from a first-class house to a second class, then a third class, then lower and lower, until she ends in some vile dance-hall, compared to which the orthodox hell is a paradise. Five years altogether Is the average life in this business. NO-SCREEN LAW. "One thing I found here that I have found nowhere else, and that is the rigid enforcement of the no-screen law. Everything was open. I shall speak of it in other places. And then the law forbidding the sale of spirituous liquors means so much to the girls, the poor, poor girls, who are so bitter against the whole world, and who are suspicious of every woman.