Before night, victims watched for will be secured; men heated with liquor, or drugged, will be robbed, and many curious and bold explorers in this locality will curse the hour in which they resolved to spend a Sunday in the Bowery." To find adventure and danger the rural visitor did not have to seek out the Bowery and the adjacent streets to the east and west.

Adroit rogues were everywhere.

Bland gentlemen introduced themselves to unwary strangers.

Instead of the mining stock or the sick engineer's story of our more enlightened and refined age, these pleasant urbanites resorted to the cruder weapon of blackmail.

The art was reduced to a system.
Terrible warnings were conveyed to the innocent country-side by the chronicler in such sub-heads as "A Widower Blackmailed," "A Minister Falls among Thieves," "Blackmailers at a Wedding," "A Bride Called On." Darkly the investigator painted the gambling evil of the New York of the sixties.