Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/225



of assignation, partly a home for the very poor, and all the children were masters of men’s language. Looking further, I saw, ten feet from the door of this house, the rear entrance to a wine-room—wide open, though it was a Sunday morning. I went to the mistress of the house of assignation, and she, hardened though she was, told me that this wine-room had supplied more than one bad place with inmates. Only a week before, she said, she saw two girls halt at that wine-room door. One was afraid to go in. The other was urging her, and while they were talking three men came out, seized the reluctant girl, and dragged her in. The next day the woman heard groans and sobs across the way, and she went to see what was the matter. She found the girls in the cellar, naked and drunk!

“My God!” the Judge exclaimed, “where was the policeman all this time?”

“Oh!” she said, “he knew all about it. He was in there, too, drinking with them!”

“It would be hard for me to repeat,” the Judge says, “all the things I saw and heard that har- rowed my very soul. But they were the causes, this crime and vice and this police partnership, of many of the woes and troubles that come into my Court.”

What could he do ? The Judge knew that