Harry was with his friend now, and both became almost livid in the face and were evidently taken back by the inquiry. "N-no; w-what is he?" stammered out Harry. "I believe he's manager of a theatrical company." "Harry" had somewhat regained his mental equilibrium by this time, and answered positively: "Don't know him; never heard of him." "Have you seen any man around in the past half hour? Russell made an engagement to meet me here." "I haven't been here but about ten minutes," and away "Harry" and his friend sailed. The detective and myself had been watching the pseudo manager for over two hours from a room across the street, and, of course, knew there was no truth in the measure he placed upon the time he was watching and waiting for victims that never came. He was not a theatrical man, but some dirty scamp. Some time ago an advertisement of the same character as the "Personal" quoted above, appeared in the Chicago papers, and many young ladies, anxious to adopt the stage as a profession, applied for positions. They obtained admission to the _quasi_ manager, who, when no resistance was made by the applicants, shipped them to Texas and other Southern points, where they found themselves perhaps penniless in the midst of a life of uncertainties, into which they had been duped and to which they had been sold. Many of these had been, and would still be, respectable young girls and ornaments to their respective home circles, were it not for the serpent with the fascinating eyes that peeped out at them from under the three or four lines in the advertising columns of that Chicago paper. Discoveries of the same kind were made in several cities of the East, and it is dreadful to contemplate the havoc which must have been wrought by this means, for surely many of the hundreds of really good girls, who are always sure to answer such an advertisement in the innocent belief that it may be the means of making Neilsons, Cushmans, Morrises or some other equally firmamentary individual in the galaxy of the stage of them, and who refused to be debauched, were sorely disappointed in the result of their apparent good fortune in obtaining the recognition of the "manager." The following letter from a band of stage-struck young men of color is an extraordinary document, and may be taken as a sample of the letters received every day by theatrical managers:--