Nevertheless it is true that a "Cow Bay," or an "Old Brewery," or a "Cut-Throat Alley" is no more possible to-day in New York than the building of a powder factory in the middle of Central Park.

The progress in sanitary purification has been most remarkable.
This narrative of the sanitary and moral reform wrought in the Five Points reminds me of another good man whom the people of this city and our whole country cannot revere too highly as a public benefactor.

I allude to Mr.Anthony Comstock, the indefatigable Secretary of the "Society for the Prevention of Vice." I knew him well when he was a clerk in a dry goods store on Broadway, and when he undertook his first purifying efforts, I little supposed that he was to achieve such reforms.

It was an Augean stable indeed that he set about cleansing.
Fifty years ago our city was flooded by obscene literature which sought no concealment.

The vilest books and pictures were openly sold in the streets, and an enormous traffic was waged in what may be called the literature of hell.