Ettie Kelter was a young married woman of unimpeachable character. She had lived in Albany until August, 1894, when she came to live in New York. One Saturday evening in the following month she went out shopping, and being a stranger in the city she lost her way. She asked a gentleman to direct her to her destination. He did so. She took the wrong turning, so he called after telling her where she should go. She had hardly taken a few steps in the right direction before a young man--a policeman in plain clothes--seized her arm and dragged her off to the police-station. There he gave her in charge, declaring he had known her for years. It was in vain she protested she had never been in the city till the previous month. She was removed under arrest to another police-station, where she was locked up in a cell with a prostitute. She was terrified. She had been dragged through the street at a great rate, and no sooner was she in the cell than a blood-vessel burst. The blood gushed from her nose and mouth, scaring her companion, who thought she was bleeding to death. The blood streamed over the floor of the cell. But all the efforts of her companion failed to attract the attention of the policeman or the matron. She hammered at the door with a tin cup, but no one came. Not until the morning did the officer come to release them from the bloody cell. [Illustration: STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK: OYSTER ROW.] Pale, weak, distracted, almost fainting, Ettie Kelter was bundled into court in the midst of a crowd of the offscourings of the streets, and brought up before Judge Hogan. She could not hear the charge, nor could she make out what the Judge said, excepting that he said something about soliciting. She did not know what it meant, but she passionately denied that she was anything but a respectable married woman who had only just come to New York. She might as well have held her peace. “Two months’ imprisonment. After that, three hundred dollars bail good behaviour.” This was Sunday morning. She was taken back to the cell, and her companion, who had been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, showed her a lawyer’s card. “Send for that man,” she said, “give him twenty dollars and he will get you out.” Her companion did so and got out. Mrs. Kelter thought it would be better to send for her husband, who was employed as fireman on the emigrant ferryboat. The policeman who arrested her volunteered to go and tell him. But when he saw Kelter the message the policeman delivered was-- “Now you have a good chance of divorce; I arrested your wife last night, and she has got two months on the Island.” She tried to write to her husband. But she had only two cents, and they would not give her a sheet of paper for less than five, nor would they send it out for less than fifty cents.