When Dr. Parkhurst was making his tour of investigation through “the avenues of our municipal Inferno,” the wardman was sent round the district to the keepers of all the disorderly houses to describe Dr. Parkhurst, and to tell them to look out for him in case he appeared at their house. Another experience was when she took a house in West Twenty-third Street to start it as an ordinary boarding-house. She had furnished it, and was trying to let it. Promptly the wardman of the precinct came to her and asked her “whether she did not know the law of the precinct.” “You know very well,” he said, “that you cannot move in here until you see the Captain.” And then this estimable officer did all he could to convince her that it was idle trying to run a decent boarding-house, and she had much better open the house in the regular way. The initiation fee would be £400, £200 down and the rest to stand over until business was good. There was to be a further payment of protection money, amounting to £240 a year. She had not much ready money, whereupon the wardman suggested that she might pawn her diamonds, for, said he, “the Captain is very bad off for money.” Another very amusing thing which came out in her evidence was the argument used by a detective named Zimmerman to induce her to give him £10. He got a couple of pounds one day, and came back the next, asking for another £2. She objected, but he said, “I will be a good friend to you. I have lots of pull, and my brother has shaved the Superintendent for twenty years, and I get a great deal; I have a pull on that account.” It is an interesting illustration of the way in which everything was turned to account for the levying of blackmail. But we could hardly get lower than this. The origin of pulls is mysterious; but to have a pull because your brother shaves the Superintendent is a very mysterious foundation for political influence. It is, however, but one among the many things in the evidence that remind us of Turkey. The barber of the Grand Vizier is no doubt a much more influential person than many a Pasha; and detective Zimmerman was probably right in believing that his pull was good. Everywhere, and at every turn, we are confronted by the omnipresent “pull.” It confirms in the strongest way what Mr. Godkin said long ago as to the city governments in America being a system of government by pulls:--