When her turn for examination came, the justice, too accustomed to the sight of vicious persons to exercise much compassion, accosted her rudely, she having been picked up as a sti'eet wanderer, and accused of vagrancy. She told a simple, touching story of her wrongs and misery. Only a month before, she had been the innocent daughter of loving parents in Connecticut. She came to the metropolis to visit an aunt, whose vicious son invited her to attend him to the theatre. She went without

THE HUDSON.

suspicion, took some refreshments which he offered her at the play, became oblivious within half an hour after partaking of the spiced wine which the young rillain had drugged, and before morning found herself covered with shame in a strange house in a strange part of the city. Utterly cast down, she avoided both aunt and parents. She was soon cast away by her wicked cousin, and on the night of her arrest was wandering alone, without shelter or hope. She was compelled to bow to her fate, whilst the law, at that time, could not touch the author of her degradation, who further wronged her by foulest slander, to palliate his own wickedness. Justice was not then so kindly disposed towards the erring and unfortunate as now. There was no Magdalen refuge for her, and the magistrate, with almost brutal roughness, reproached her, and sent her to " the Island"'^' for six months as a vagrant. The gentleman who witnessed this scene became possessed of her subsequent history.