mingle with them recitals of horrible personal wrongs suffered, and the lives of infamy led by many females, whom better surroundings than they enjoyed, or more benevolence and kindness than they received, might have saved, and elevated to places as comparatively dignified in the world as the position they now occupy is base and degraded. "Society," it is true, as a great philosopher has aptly said, "creates, for the most part, the crimes which it punishes;" and though the detective, in the pursuit of his calling, is apt to become merciless towards the really guilty, and to condemn them outright,--declaring that they could, if they would, do better,--he knows that it would, a thousand times, seem that the very "conspiracy of circumstances" irresistibly impels men on to the commission of crimes, and in his reason he is more lenient towards his fellow-men than his profession permits him to be in practice. But there are villains in the world who seem to combine with base desires and notions a persistency in the expression of them which never wearies. They pursue their base objects with a tirelessness which would be most admirable in a good cause. Indeed, virtue, save as exemplified in the characters of a few great souls, grows weary and careless, and turns almost to vice, long before the perseverance of these villains would turn from its course of wrong. There seems to be a romantic impulse for some in the very trials that beset the path of crime. The more hair-breadth escapes to be made, the more eagerly do these villains seem to enter upon their course. But I must not stop to moralize farther here. Unwilling to recite any tale of my own experience of the kind to which I have alluded, as related to the rescuing of intended female victims from the snares of the despoiler, which now comes to my mind, I will recall, as clearly as I can, the story of a brother detective. I was coming from Buffalo, in 1859, and chanced to enter the car in which he was seated, on his way to New York, from a successful professional mission at the further West, and fortunately found a seat with him in the same chair. We occupied our time mostly as detectives, when travelling together, are apt to, in the narration of our professional experiences; and let me say here, that of all "story-tellers," the best I have ever listened to are detectives,--the most "apt scholars" usually of human nature,--and what is more, they always have truths enough of a startling kind to tell, to be under no necessity of "drawing on the imagination." Thus ran his story of "Hattie Newberry:"--I may get places and names, in some particulars, not exactly correct. I merely wish to present the substance; and I remember it more particularly, because the case he cited was in so many respects like one of mine, which, however, had features which would be unfit for display in these pages. But to the narrative.