While it lay
there, the door was noiselessly opened, and a man, roughly dressed,
with his face partly concealed, entered, glancing around carefully to
see if he was noticed. Then closing the door quickly, he approached the
body, and produced a pair of large shears; lifting the lifeless form
roughly with one hand, with the other he severed the long tresses
quickly from the cold head, and gathering them up, departed as
noiselessly as he had come, taking with him the only source of
happiness the dead woman had ever possessed. The braid was sold for a
mere trifle to a fashionable hair-dresser, who asked no questions
concerning it, and when it was seen next, it was worn by some fine
lady, who, in, her thoughtless vanity, never paused to consider its
history.
CHAPTER XXVI.
POOR GIRLS.
We cannot hope to do justice to this branch of our subject. To treat it
properly would require a volume, for it is full of the saddest,
sternest, and most truthful romance. A writer in _Putnam's Magazine_
for April, 1868, presented an able and authentic paper on this subject,
which is so full and interesting that we have decided to quote a few
extracts from it here, in place of any statement of our own.
Where the Bowery runs into Chatham street, we pause, and from within
our close-buttoned overcoats look out over our mufflers at the passing
throng.
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