Persons are Robbed,

CHAPTER IX.
A Theatrical Romance—Kate Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved—Manager Hemmings charged by Fast paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny,

CHAPTER X.
A Mariner's Wooing—Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters—Breakers on a Matrimonial Lee Shore—He is Grounded on Divorce Shoals,

CHAPTER XI.
The Baron and "Baroness"—The Romance of Baron Henry Arnous de Reviere, and "The Buckeye Baroness," Helene Stille,

CHAPTER XII.
The Demi-monde,

CHAPTER XIII.
Passion's Slaves and Victims—A Matter of Untold History—The Terrible Machinery of the Law as a Means of Persecution—Edwin James's Rascality,

CHAPTER XIV.
Procuresses and their Victims—Clandestine Meetings at Seemingly Respectable Resorts—The "Introduction House,"

CHAPTER XV.
Quacks and Quackery—Specimen Advertisements—The Bait Held Out, and the Fish who are Expected to Bite,

CHAPTER XVI.
Abortion and the Abortionists—The Career of Madame Restell—Rosenzweig's Good Luck,

CHAPTER XVII.
Divorce—The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists—How Divorce Laws Vary in Certain Slates—Sweeping Amendments Necessary—Illustrative Cases,

CHAPTER XVIII.
Black-mail—Who Practice it, How it is Perpetrated, and Upon Whom—The Birds who are Caught, and the Fowlers who Ensnare them—With other Interesting Matters on the same Subject,

CHAPTER XIX.
About Detectives—The "Javerts," "Old Sleuths" and "Buckets" of Fiction as Contrasted with the Genuine Article—Popular Notions of Detective Work Altogether Erroneous—An Ex-detective's Views—The Divorce Detective,

CHAPTER XX.
Gambling and Gamblers—The Delusions that Control the Devotees of Policy—What the Mathematical Chances are Against the Players—Tricks in French Pools—"Bucking the Tiger"—"Ropers-in"—How Strangers are Victimized,

CHAPTER XXI.
Gambling made Easy—The Last Ingenious Scheme to Fool the Police—Flat-houses Turned into Gambling Houses—"Stud-horse Poker" and "Hide the Heart,"

CHAPTER XXII.
Slumming—Depravity of Life in Billy McGlory's—A Three-hours' Visit to the Place—Degraded Men and Lost Women who are Nightly in this Criminal Whirlpool,

CHAPTER XXIII.
Our Waste Basket—Contemporaneous Records and Memoranda of Interesting Cases,

        Miss Ruff's Tribulations,

        Astounding Degradation,

        Fall of a Youthful, Beautiful and Accomplished Wife,

        A French Beauty's Troubles,

        Life on the Boston Boats,

        An Eighty-year-old "Fence,"

        Shoppers' Perils,

It is to be presumed that the readers of this book will expect a few words on a subject "on which," as Lord Byron somewhere remarks, "all men are supposed to be fluent and none agreeable—self." However much the inclination and, I might add, temptation may run in the direction of fluency and diffuseness in this case, my utterance shall be as brief as possible. I, William F. Howe, founder of the law firm of Howe & Hummel, was born in Shawmut street, in Boston, Mass., on the seventh day of July, 1828. My father was the Rev. Samuel Howe, M. A., a rather well-known and popular Episcopal clergyman at the Hub in those days. Our family removed to England when I was yet very young, and consequently my earliest recollections are of London. I remember going to school, where I speedily developed a genius for mischief and for getting into scrapes. I received a liberal allowance of the floggings then fashionable, and I can recall the hwhish of the implement of torture to this day. We are all young but once, and when memory calls up the lively pitched battles, and the pummelings I got and gave at school, I am young again—only my waist is a good deal more expansive, my step is not so elastic or my sight so clear. I could recall the names of some of those boys with whom I fought in those happy school days, and tell how one now adorns the British bench, how another holds a cabinet portfolio, how another fell bravely fighting in Africa, and how several, striving neither for name or fame,

        "Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
        Pursue the noiseless tenor of their way";

but it would be useless, as would also my experiences at church, listening to my good father's sermons, and falling constantly asleep.

My youthful reminiscences of events which happened, and of which I heard or read in my youth, are mostly chaotic and incongruous; but it is otherwise with the murders. I remember with what thrilling interest I