ported by degraded men of their own race, who, despite our laws, contrive to hold them to a life-long servitude, which is a thousand times more hopeless and terrible than the negro slavery of Louisiana or Cuba could ever be. They have been reared to a life of shame from infancy, and have not a single trace of the native modesty of women left. They are, as we have said, mere children in point of intellect, having no education whatever, and no experience of the world outside of the narrow alleys in which they have always lived, and the emigrant ship in which they were brought over to this country. They have their likes and their dislikes, of course, and become attached to each other in a childish way, frequently being seen walking together on the streets, hand in hand, like little Caucasian sisters going home from school. At very long intervals, some of these poor untutored children of the East become imbued with Western notions of liberty and right, and making their escape from the clutches of their masters, become joined in lawful marriage to some laborious washerman, or other countryman, and endeavor to settle down to an honest life; but their chances of escaping kidnapping, and being dragged away to some distant locality, beaten, and reduced again to prostitution and slavery, are very slim indeed. The owner in such cases has always a personal grudge, as well as a pecuniary loss, to urge him on to vindictive measures; and he will willingly spend ten times the value of his escaping chattel to get her back again, and have his revenge. Besides, the safety of this peculiar institution demands
