"It is but a step from the palace to the tomb."
True, and so it seemed this night; for ere I had fairly realized the fact that I had passed over the short step of two squares between the City prison--the Tombs--and Broadway, I stood looking into that great palace hall on the corner of Franklin street, known as Taylor's Saloon.
Was ever eating and drinking temptation more gorgeously fitted up? How the gilt and carving, and elaborate skill of the painter's art glitter in the more than sun-light splendor of a hundred sparkling gas-burners. Are the windows open? No. The ten-feet long plates of glass are so clear from speck, it seems as though it were open space. Look in. It is midnight. Is all still? Do the tired servants sleep? No. They are flitting up and down, with noiseless tread, to furnish late suppers and health-destroying luxuries, to a host of men and gayly dressed women. 'Tis the palace of luxury--'tis but a step from the palace to the tombs--'tis but a step beyond to the home of "the Rag Picker's Daughter"--'tis here that the first step is taken which leads to infamy like that of that daughter's mother. 'Tis here that he, whose trade is seduction, walketh unshamed at noonday, or prowls at midnight, to select his victims. 'Tis here that mothers suffer young daughters to come at this untimely midnight hour to drink "light wines," or eat ice cream, drugged with passion-exciting vanilla.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the fiend as we passed, on, "rag-picking mothers are not the only ones who traffic away the virtue of young daughters in this rum-flooded city."
"What," said I, as I passed on, "if all the mis-spent shillings, worse than wasted in this palace, were dropped into the treasury of the House of Industry?"
"Cow Bay, Farlow's Court, and Rotten Row, would be no more, and my occupation would be gone," said the fiend. "It must not be. Dry up rum, and murder would cease and misery have no home here. It must not be. _Our_ trade is in danger; I must alarm my friends!"
And he clattered his cloven foot down the steps of a nearby cellar, where there were loud sounds of blasphemous words, the noise of jingling glasses, and much wrangling, amid which I heard female voices in one of the "private rooms," and then an order for more wine--then I heard old cloven foot say, "give them a bottle of two-and-sixpenny cider, they are so drunk now they wont know the odds."