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. There are many novel features in it, but let them pass. Note these thinly-clad creatures who hurry shivering past, while the keen wind searches, with icy fingers, through their scanty garments, and whirls the blinding snow in their pitiful, wearied faces. We count them by tens, by scores, by hundreds, as we stand patiently here--all bearing the same general aspect of countenance, all hurrying anxiously forward, as if this morning's journey were the most momentous one of their whole lives. But they take the same journey every morning, year in and year out, whether the sun shines or the rain falls, or the bleak winds whistle and the snow sweeps in their faces, with a pain like the cutting of knives. The same faces go past in this dreary procession month after month. Occasionally one will be missing--she is dead. Another: she is worse than dead--_her_ face had beauty in it. Thus one by one I have seen them drop away--caught by disease, born of their work and their want, bringing speedy end to the weary, empty life; caught by temptation and drawn into the giddy maelstrom of sin, to come out no more forever.
To-morrow morning take your stand at Fulton or Catharine ferry, and you shall see much such another procession go shivering by. The next day station yourself somewhere on the west side, say in Canal street, a few blocks from Broadway; here it is again. If Asmodeus-like, you could hover in the air above the roofs of the town, and look down upon its myriad streets at this hour, you would see such processions in every quarter of the metropolis. The spectacle would help you to form some idea of the vastness of the theme now on our hands.