THE morning paper contained this extravagant personal: "Do not suicide. If you are a non-resident of New York in difficulty, at nine to-night walk east by the corner of the ———— Building with a copy of this paper in your right hand."

The conservative foreigner, unfamiliar with our great dailies, would, perhaps, be surprised that the editor would print such a questionable announcement in his paper, but at this time in New York the personal column had become a very questionable directory, resorted to by all classes of mankind for every conceivable purpose, be it gain, adventure, or even crime; no one thought to question the propriety of such publications. Indeed, no one stopped to consider them at all, unless he happened to be a party in interest.