anything like a fair proportion of the value of a thing stolen, the loser will almost universally compromise with the thief when the detective secures him. "Compounding a felony," in itself a crime at the Common Law, has become so universal as to be the "common law" itself: and in New York it is a matter of but slight disgrace, at most, to be guilty of any crime; and especially of those crimes by which the perpetrator secures a large amount of money. Wall Street, for example, is thronged every day by men in respectable and high ranks of society, who are frequently guilty of crimes which would, a generation ago, have consigned them to the State Prison for a long term of years, if not for life. But after all, the reflection comes that morals, like the matter of conscience, are educatable, changeable; and that the hearts of men are not so very bad at bottom, most wrongs being chargeable to the institutions of the people. Competition, instead of coöperation, being the rule, and the depraved doctrines of such writers as Carlyle, advocating the development of the individual, rather than the interest of communities and blended peoples, have had a direct tendency to increase the volume of crime. But I will, with these "prefatory remarks," return to the body of my subject. New York contains a large number of people who obtain their living by the practice of frauds, of one kind and another. The gambling saloons, with their marked cards, and faro banks, so arranged that while the pretension of fairness is observed, the chances in favor of the bank are made sure in the proportion of ninety per cent. to ten per cent. for every hundred dollars which go upon the table; the iniquitous "corners" made in Wall Street, and all the fine scheming of the Bulls and the Bears, etc., etc., illustrate this. In fact, commerce itself is, in all its avenues, made to bend to this skill of fraud in making money, and making a living; and it is a wonder that there are not more, rather than less of the institutions of which I am about to speak, in New York. These exist to-day; but it is a long while since I have been called into relations with them in a professional capacity.