THE morning paper contained this extravagant personal: "Do not suicide.
If you are a non-resident of New York in difficulty, at nine to-night
walk east by the corner of the -------- Building with a copy of this
paper in your right hand."
The conservative foreigner, unfamiliar with our great dailies, would,
perhaps, be surprised that the editor would print such a questionable
announcement in his paper, but at this time in New York the personal
column had become a very questionable directory, resorted to by all
classes of mankind for every conceivable purpose, be it gain, adventure,
or even crime; no one thought to question the propriety of such
publications. Indeed, no one stopped to consider them at all, unless he
happened to be a party in interest.