I will cheerfully pay $1,000 to any charity that any person can name, who will show I have ever received one dollar outside of my salary from the Society I represent. I have paid over to our treasury more than $6,000, personal fees, moieties, gifts, etc., during the past seven years. And I surrendered a good business prospect to do this work, and I have earnestly tried to be true and faithful, to God and man.

I was neither a sutler's clerk in a Connecticut, nor any other regiment at any time, and no truer.

I was never a peddler, and the remainder of the story is just as true as what I have already referred to.

One issue of this man's paper contained some forty or fifty cases of dealers and ex-convicts, where these worst dealers in that which was vilest and most infamous, were lauded and made to appear as martyrs illegally torn from their families, while their families were left to suffer, etc. There was much printer's ink expended in creating sympathy for these bereaved families; and the law was characterized as cruel and the prosecution heartless, because these miscreants, these moral cancer planters, these worse than ghouls, were legally stopped from scattering their venom among the youth of our land. In order to illustrate the method adopted in each of the convict's cases, which these parties defended as so very correct, and where gross outrages were charged in the enforcement of the laws, I beg the indulgence of the reader while I give the facts in the Massey case above described.

At the time referred to, there appeared a very broad advertisement over the name of Silas Rogers & Co., 737 Broadway. As it was my duty (and pleasure), I investigated this case to discover that, once or twice a day, some unknown person would sneak into the building aforesaid, and creeping up stairs to the top floor, would watch around till no person was looking, and then dart into a vacant room, furnished with—just a tin letter-box on the inside of the door. The door to this room was always locked, and the carrier would drop the letters into the box through a little hole cut in the door.

In investigating this case I did it, as I do in all cases through

the mails, by correspondence. I received their circular advertising obscene things, and I sent money for what they advertised in precisely the manner they invited the public to send. I did business with them exactly as they desired: and in reply to letters I received the most foul and obscene matter from them. A warrant was issued in due form, and accompanied by a marshal I visited this place. We found it as described above. We waited, concealed, until he had gone in and had received his letters, and then we arrested this man Massey. It was the going afterwards to the den of this scoundrel above referred to, whom we were satisfied was the real proprietor of this business, to seize the obscene matter that Rogers & Co. were sending out, that we caught him, committing the heinous offense attributed to the author of this base libel. He is one of the leaders of the "liberals" in this crusade against decency and morality. His imprint is seen in various ways. He was a frequenter of the office of and friend to the ringleader, and from his hand came many of these of these grossest attacks upon me.

And what did they defend? A business that, from its character, was worthy of such base and infamous schemes in its behalf. The men, the scheme, and the nefarious business were well matched. There was a striking affinity, and an appropriateness of the union, that helped to make a complete whole.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS.

CONSPIRACY CONTINUED.

The effect of this cursed business on our youth and society, no pen can describe. It breeds lust. Lust defiles the body, debauches the imagination, corrupts the mind, deadens the will, destroys the memory, sears the conscience, hardens the heart, and damns the soul. It unnerves the arm, and steals away the elastic step. It robs the soul of manly virtues, and imprints upon the mind of the youth, visions that throughout life curse the man or woman. Like a panorama, the imagination seems to keep this hated thing before the mind, until it wears its way deeper and deeper, plunging the victim into practices that he loathes.

This traffic has made rakes and libertines in society-skeletons in many a household. The family is polluted, home desecrated, and each generation born into the world is more and more cursed by the inherited weaknesses, the harvest of this seed-sowing of the Evil one.

And these monsters-these devil-men, or men-devils-caught in this cursed traffic, and prosecuted legally, and legally placed where they cannot longer strike their deadly fangs into the vitals of the youth, are made martyrs of, and the so-called "liberals" of this land rally to their defence! and, at the beck and call of this band of ex-convicts and co-conspirators, a combined effort is made to repeal these laws!

There is a mawkish sympathy for criminals, among even good men, that is all for the prisoner, and nothing for the victim. The burglar who enters the house at night and terrifies helpless women and children, or cripples for life the master of the household, if arrested, is an object of special sympathy. Poor fellow! to be shut up behind the bars and deprived of his liberty! The vender of obscene publications, or the keeper of the gambling hell and

the rum shop these fellows who make criminals, who bring disgrace on the family and suffering on helpless women and children -are especial objects of sympathy; while not a thought is bestowed upon the youth cursed for life, the wife widowed, the child orphaned, the family disgraced, pauperized, and destroyed. My sympathy is for the family of the prisoner, but not to that extent that I am blinded to the lasting curse the prisoner is daily inflicting on other families in the community.

Let the artist paint a picture, if he can, that shall fully describe the anguish of the parent who wakes up to the knowledge that the beloved child is debauched.

For instance, what pen or brush can picture the awful suffering of the father of that once beautiful girl, who recently died in one of the infernal dens in the upper part of our city? On a bright day she left her home and the quiet village on the eastern end of Long Island, where she lived, ostensibly to visit friends in New York. Never a word of suspicion had been raised against her moral character. It is said that she was a favorite in the home, church, and society. As she left her home, she was to her beloved parents a pure, spotless child. Imagine, then, the anguish of the father when, a few days afterward, having been summoned by telegraph, he starts with his wife to go to his daughter's sick-bed, and on the cars, when the New York papers are brought in, the first thing to catch his eyes is the death by malpractice of his beautiful child. He has presence of mind sufficient to throw the paper out of the window, as though he had lost it, so that his wife may not know of it, till he learns if it indeed be true. He then goes up to this abortion den, and there finds all that is left of his lovely child lying in a filthy hall-bedroom, taken there by the son of a respectable family, whose mind had been debauched, and who, after ruining this maiden, failed to marry her, but took her to this place of human butchery. And what a death! Helpless, alone in a cold, cheerless room, without friends, neglected, brutally murdered by a worse than murderess; for, after inflicting the deadly stab, the victim is tortured by neglect, and left to die in a condition of which the details are too loathsome for publica

tion. Is it any wonder that this helpless maiden, in her last agonies, threw her fair arms about the neck of a godless coroner, and besought him to pray for her?

And there is more mawkish sympathy for the young man who led this fair maiden to her ruin, and for the wretch who tortured her to death, to save them from the just punishment the law inflicts for these crimes, than for the large circle of friends made to hang their heads in shame; or for the home worse than desolate by this terrible event.

You ask for my sympathy, and talk of mercy for these men, who sow the seeds of such ruin! First, put these foul creatures legally out of the community, where they can do no more harm to tender youth, and let them repent and turn from their cursed traffic, and give evidences of sorrow and repentance.

My sympathy is with the children and youth, who are liable to be thus debauched and cursed for life. Away with this sympathy for criminals! Talk of judgment and justice first. We can better afford to support by public charity every friend of each criminal, than allow a single person to go unpunished who offends against these laws.

Up to the time of this "Liberal" struggle in 1877-'78 there had been more than 250 persons arrested, and 20 tons weight of matter had been seized and destroyed. Yet the imperative demand of these so-called "Liberals" was, these laws must be repealed. The campaign was well planned by these enemies to moral purity. The conflict was to be a determined one. It was to be bitter and relentless. It was to be a Gettysburg. Having distributed their 15,000 circulars and blank petitions, the conspirators were all exultation at the ready response of money, and signatures to their petitions, by the infidel and lawless class. These moneys enabled the shrewd editor to enlarge his paper, and send specimen copies of it to persons whom he sought to secure as subscribers. The following will show the progress of their scheme printed in one of the liberal papers, published by the leading conspirators.

Again we want to assure our many kind friends that we feel very grateful