possible, wash the stains from their souls with their heart's blood. Every year of the world thousands of them, unable to further bear their weight of shame, to longer endure the fierce scourgings of the fire-whips of an avenging conscience, burst the gates of death, hide in the grave from a cold world's bitter scorn. Other escape there is none; society will not receive them back; its doors are irrevocably closed to them. They may knock, but it will not be opened unto them; they may come on their knees, groping their way through penitential tears, but they will be spurned from its portals with foul reproach. Society made them what they are; it now sits in judgment upon them and declares that they shall be no other. From the lips of the stern judge are never heard those words, the sweetest that ever fell on mortal ears, divinest sentence that ever passed the lips of God or man, Go and sin no Other criminals reform. The thief becomes an honest man; the forger lives down his crime; the manslayer purifies his bloody hands with a life-time of noble deeds; but once a courtesan always a courtesan. There is no place in all the wide world but the bagnio for the woman who has once erred, no matter how youthful or inexperienced, how foul her betrayal. more." "No; gayer insects fluttering by 66 Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die, Except an erring sister's shame.” Those good people who drag her hence but plunge her into tortures beyond her powers of endurance; but place her on exhibition for the world to mock, set her up as a mark for the cold unmoving finger of scorn. Those who can stand the ordeal are seldom worth saving; are women scarce conscious of their degradation, mere animals to whom all life is alike-who care little whether they take their food from the hand of a boorish husband or a dashing paramour. Crazed by the world's contempt, by its brutal scorn, trampled beneath the feet of women not worthy to serve them as waiting maids or scullions, the most rush back into the old evil life and madly plunge to more fearful depths. What salvation can be devised for the thousands of noble women who have fallen beneath the terrible ban of public opinion? There is only one way: to reform public opinion itself; to lift from these daughters of shame the dead weight that is crushing them down to the deepest hell; to throw open to them the gates of the upper as well as of the nether world. Such a task will appear to many almost as hopeless as an attempt to change the ocean's tides or alter the law of gravitation; but such forget that Falsehood and Folly fade before Truth like night's black shadows before the faintest light ray that trembles from the great sun. The world is naturally honest, just, pitiful; its attitude toward the fallen woman is an unnatural one, the result of centuries of false education and fatuous religion. Pessimist as I am called, I still have sufficient faith in my fellow men to believe that they will not persist in a grievous, a brutal crime, when they can once be made to see that it is such. But who is to convince them? The press? The pulpit? Is not the present deplorable condition the result of their teaching? They have created a false, a vicious public opinion, before which they now cower and tremble. Is there a minister living with the courage to urge his parishioners to throw open their homes to and receive on a foot ing of social equality the repentant Magdalen? Is there a daily paper between the two oceans that would dare make such a suggestion,—that would, even for a fat bribe, state in its editorial columns that the most abandoned courtesan that ever made night hideous with her drunken brawling, may become the peer of the president's wife by discarding her evil ways and thenceforth living a life of purity and nobleness? Not one! Yet is it not true? If not, why not? If there is any truth in our religion, the portals of heaven will fly wide open at her approach; yet we close the door in her face! Almighty God thinks her good enough to associate with the Virgin Mary, yet we raise a devil of a row if we see her talking across the back fence to our daughters or wives! The Creator of the Cosmos is waiting to crown her amid the glad acclaim of the heavenly host; yet our nice American gentleman does not consider that she is good enough to wear his name and cook his hash! His honor would be irremediably smirched by such an alliance! Yet if he can but toll her back into the old life and be one of a hundred to visit her foul bed, his honor will not show even a fly-speck—will shine like a new tin pan at a Republican powwow! Curious this thing male bipeds are wont to call their honor! The world, ever gross despite centuries of civilization, makes no distinction in illicit intercourse of the sexes. To it all women found even one step outside the prescribed path are equally vile, alike deserving unmitigated censure; yet from the highest to the lowest of those so outlawed and placed beneath society's ban, is a sweep as far from the highest heaven as to the deepest hell. Some of the noblest, grandest women ever sent into this dreary world by a beneficent God to brighten its cimmerian gloom are known to have lived on very intimate terms with the men they loved, and that, too, without the formality of securing society's sanction. Love is a celestial flame that has not yet been educated to burn ever according to terrestrial law. Sometimes it will overlap such fences as secular statutes and religious dogmas and set the world on fire! Many a noble woman has become a man's mistress because she could neither become his wife nor trample her heart beneath her feet at the dictates of society. With some women love is a higher law, before which canons of church and State shrivel into nothingness. No saintly anathema, no fiat of society can disturb their devotion. Though the world reel, the heavens fall and black chaos come again, they will cling closer to the shrine upon which they have cast their hearts. Of these we need not speak further here. Society has no power over them for good or ill. From its fallible judgment they calmly and confidently appeal to an infallible God. For those at the other extreme, the law of whose lives is Lust instead of Love, children of the slums, the spawn of criminals, who were courtesans from the very cradle, there is no hope. There is no method by which those now existent can be successfully reached. All that we can hope to do, is, by improving society, to curtail the class which breeds them. This cannot be done by dogmatizing or founding 'homes for fallen women"; we must do our most effective work in our industrial system. When the laborer's lot is made easier; when it becomes possible for all men and women to earn an honest living, society will have fewer crimes and courtesan-breeding " dregs.' 66 It is that vast class of women, once as pure as the snow but now foul as the hags of hell, yet who still retain a shadow of that "divine shame" which distinguishes humanity from the brute, and who long to return to the upper world, to win back the respect they have forfeited -that chiefly concerns us here. Naturally the first step would be to so reform society that it will not year by year pour thousands upon thousands of fresh recruits into the ranks of the fallen. Here, too, the need of industrious reform becomes apparent. Bitter poverty is as potent to make prostitutes of young women as thieves of young men. Make it possible for every young woman to earn an honest and respectable living and you will save more souls than have been garnered by all the priests and preachers from Melchizedek to Sam Jones. You make it possible for thousands of young women to choose between good and evil whose only alternative now of degradation is death. You prepare a field in which it is possible for moral maxims to take root. It is useless to hurl homilies at people suffering for food and fuel while the devil is clinking his gold pieces and dazzling their eyes with gems. But the most effective method of checking an evil that threatens to engulf the world, is the easiest; it is to repeat to every repentant sinner the words of the Saviour: "Go and sin no more." Let the past perish and be forgotten: we will not judge you by what you have been but by what you are. Come out of the depths! If the God who made you forgives your transgressions, can we petty creatures, resting in the hollow of His hand, annul his judgments? If He says that your repentant tears have washed you white as snow, shall we appeal from His great court to that of Mrs. Grundy? *** THE "COUNTESS" CASTELLANE. AND now a tale of woe comes drifting across the dark blue sea-another American woman who wedded a titled nonentity is, like Niobe, all tears. Miss Anna Gould is the |