No one.

more, to take sides with the brandy and burn the woman out of her as far as possible. By a complete ostracism we say, "If you can not make yourself out to be snow-white, you shall be held to be jet-black." We thus consign her to that ante-chamber of Hell, Recklessness. Once let them be reckless, and the work of perdition, so far as society can carry it, is complete. The last restraining tie is snapped. What is expected of them? Nought but evil. Who cares whether they struggle to be better or not? Who will venture to treat them as other than vile, even if they should be Madonnas ? None. Now they shall know the meaning of the words, Outcast, Abandoned. Society thus builds a high, smooth wall over against them, with no ladder let down nay, with sharp spikes on it to mangle them if they should dare aspire to climb back. If they have tears to shed, or hearts that can break, let them flow, let them break on the breasts of the profligate who have ruined them! Ah, it is pitiful—indeed, it is to think how willing men and women are to let their own flesh and blood go, even to shove them on by looks of scorn and words of gall to the verge of the abyss, to shake themselves free of their clutches, to let them fall over their several precipices, to cast no glance after, but go on smiling and light-hearted to their homes and churches.

-

When Samuel Adams, in the olden days, came into his house one day, he saw a negro woman shivering over the fire, and asked who it was. His wife replied that it was a poor slave who had run away from her master. Then did the grand old man thunder out, "She became free when she entered that door!" We will borrow his voice for the present, and naming the prostitute here, she shall not be to us the soiled and miserable one who passes you on the street returning cursing for jeering: she shall be to us a being of awful grandeur, an immortal child of the Omnipotent, bearing his image, living by his protection; through the tatters and rags of earthly defilement we pierce to the Heaven-descended soul burning within her flame clouded, indeed, but imperishable as God.

We need not dwell on the terrible statistics of this evil. Every city of much extent has recently secured more or less perfect statistics; and in every case the return has been like the shock of an earthquake. Fathers and mothers stand aghast to find that their children are growing up and walking their daily rounds amongst

quicksands and on the edges of precipices. A thousand, openly declared, walk the streets of our own city; and the number ascertained is known to be but a small proportion to the number veiled under that secrecy with which this vice of all others most conceals its deformities. It is only in the lowest steps of the descending scale that it can be investigated. When so much is known, one may well shudder at the unknown. What we have learned, however, is sufficient to establish a few general facts and laws attendant on this vice, which it is well we should discern and confront.

1. The majority of prostitutes are between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

2. One-fifth, on the average, are married women.

3. Half of these have children growing up around them and under their influence. Many of these children live in abodes of vice. The mortality among them is four times greater than that among other children in cities.

4. Nearly one-half of these women are sufferers from the most fearful and infectious diseases.

5. The average duration of a prostitute's life is only four years about one-eighth of the average of life's duration ! 6. Education, even rudimental, is very rare among them. 7. Six-sevenths of them drink intoxicating liquors.

8. In New York City there are more than eight thousand prostitutes, officially known; and the annual expenditure on account of the evil is more than $7,000,000. And the proportion is about the same to the population in the other American cities.

9. The causes which have led them to this course of life range as follows: 1. Destitution; 2. Seduction, generally under promise of marriage; 3. Ill-treatment by parents, husbands, or relatives; 4. Ill-assorted marriages; 5. Intemperance; 6. Bad company.

- Let us pause on these causes, which are, after all, the most important to us, since Causes, clearly seen, imply Remedies. Nearly all of these causes may be comprehended under the first one named. Destitution is the poisonous tap-root of Prostitution in our cities. Starvation lashes the woman into the street. Want makes her an easy prey to the seducer with his promises of plenty. Ill-assorted marriages come generally of the eagerness to seize on anything which seems, by offering a support, to save, whilst it really brings new temptations. This is an ascertained and im

portant fact that not once in a thousand cases does the woman take this step willingly.

This evil will never be understood, much less successfully grappled with, until it is clearly understood, as it has been again and again attested, that animal passion very rarely rages in the breast of a woman, and almost never uncontrollably. Sanger, Tait, Mayhew, and all the French statists agree, that if houses of ill fame depended on simple animalism in that sex, there would scarcely be one in the world. It is, we know, almost impossible for men to conceive this, yet it is true. One or two cases are reported where, from curiosity, or the love of adventure, they have adopted this life for a while and found it impossible to return; but not one is reported as the result of sensual craving, except in cases of disease. We are, then, forced to face as the real cause of this overshadowing Evil — POVERTY.

The Captain of Police in New York says he has known young women to struggle as with death, for months and months, "sleeping in station-houses at night, and living on bread and water during the day," before they would take the awful step. Dr. Sanger, Physician of Blackwell's Island, N. Y., who has pursued the subject more thoroughly than was ever done before, comes to this conclusion: "The most prominent fact is, that a large number of females, both operatives and domestics, earn so small wages, that a temporary cessation of their business, or being a short time out of a situation, is sufficient to reduce them to absolute distress. Provident habits are useless in their cases; for, much as they may feel the necessity, they have nothing to save, and the very day that they encounter a reverse sees them penniless. The struggle which a virtuous girl will wage against fate in such circumstances, may be conceived: it is a literal battle for life, and in the result life is too often preserved only by the sacrifice of virtue." We must remember, too, that this poverty leads these destitute ones into those poor and wretched lodging-houses, where the decencies of life can not be regarded, where all ages and sexes herd together, where the barriers of modesty and virtue are gradually broken down.

Society, then, up to this noon of the nineteenth century of Christ's religion, has discovered no sufficient occupations for women except sewing or prostitution; and the latter is more frequently than otherwise her only sure protection from absolute

want. Therefore society has built the brothels. Whether it is willing to license them or not, it must bear the hateful burthen. Few employments are open to women: those few furnish so little and so precarious pay, that the loss of body's life or soul's life are often the horrid alternatives. How little know we of the Moral Waterloos, the Spiritual Crimeas that are waging in the humblest hearts all around us!

In the memorials of Thomas Hood, lately published, an etching is given of his monument. The Poet drew for his own tomb a design of a threaded needle piercing a heart; under it is written, "He sang the song of the Shirt; "above is a hawk. On the side next this is a representation of the scene of the "Bridge of Sighs." The suicide, so slender and fair, is borne up by tender hands, and in the heart is the dirge

"Oh, it was pitiful,

Near a whole city full,

Home she had none!"

It is well that next to the heart pierced by the threaded needle should be the story of the self-destroyed prostitute. They are obverse and reverse of the same picture. They were fearful facts strung on the same thread of fire; and they stand in their true relation there on the tomb of one who gave his heart-strings to sing the plaintive songs of the destitution and the death in life. When the Sewing Machine came it threw thousands out of employment, Society not being up to the progress of invention, and having not secured other branches of occupation to women. And now many a poor woman dies the death on account of her pitiful dollar per week, on which her mother and perhaps others must be supported. As she goes home with her meagre wages, her sick heart, her weary nerves, her wet eyes, the gaily dressed prostitute flaunts past her; and a whisper is in her heart that her shame is well paid from five to fifty dollars a week!

for

Let us veil our faces over the rest.

How shall this evil be dealt with? Many are the replies given. And it is a hopeful sign that the questioning has reached in earnest minds a consideration of the License-system of France. It is natural that our feelings should revolt at the idea of legalizing any evil, and especially of licensing this the most degraded of all. But if it is a name we are frightened at, and no real evil; if by the license-system not one item is added to the catalogue of crime, but

the serpent is taken out of the grass where it may wound the heel unperceived and placed where we may deal with it; if loathsome diseases are checked because of the right of Society to supervise and control whatever it allows; if rape and seduction are diminished,— why, then, the change would be desirable. The facts are strong which seem to indicate this, and many excellent men bear testimonies in its favor. But we require more facts before we can see clearly the propriety of such a momentous step. Two things, however, may be suggested without hesitation :

1. Every city should have Lying-in Hospitals and Foundling Hospitals. We should not be frightened by the cry that such institutions smooth the path of vice, which should be made and kept thorny, Heaven knows, the path is in no danger of being made flowery. It begins in pain, it ends in agony. Nor should we apprehend that the Foundling Hospital makes the concealment of the results of Crime too easy. If the Hospital does not conceal the fruits of Crime, Abortion and Infanticide will; and wherever the former exists, the latter almost disappear. It is never dangerous to be humane; and we can leave with Him who has said "Vengeance is mine," the strewing of all necessary thorns and flints in the path of sin.

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2. No community can for a moment regard itself as semi-Christian which does not have a home, furnished with kind hearts at least, which shall say, "We are not set here to condemn thee: come in peace, and sin no more." Our facts go to show that there are few of these sisters to whom their lives are not loathsome; few who, if they knew of one heart in the wide world which would beat with tenderness for them, or one hand which would be extended to them, would not fly to that heart and cling to that hand, and cry, Save me! Help me to return!" This is true, whatever aversion they may have shown to repairing to those sunless religious caverns prepared in some quarters for them, where penances are assigned them, for trust and instruction, and they are treated as subjects for hell-fires, instead of being regarded as deeply wronged martyrs of an unformed social state, for whom no smile is too sunny, no voice too hopeful. We read of a ring and a robe given to the prodigal, but not of a tract under the plate and a catechism on the pillow; of dancing and music, but not of hard work all day and no freedom, lest he should run back again to the husks and swine.