Reader, did you ever try to estimate the malign influence upon society of one single fallen woman? Did you ever endeavor to calculate the evils of such a leaven stealthily disseminating its influence in a community? Woman, courted, flattered, fondled, tempted and deceived, becomes in turn the terrible Nemesis--the insatiate Avenger of her sex! Armed with a power which is all but irresistible, and stripped of that which alone can retain and purify her influence, she steps upon the arena of life ready to act her part in the demoralization of society. As some one has remarked, "the _lex talionis_--the law of retaliation--is hers. Society has made her what she is, and must now be governed by her potent influence." Surely the weight of this influence baffles computation! View it in shattered domestic ties, in the sacrifice of family peace, in the cold desolation of once happy homes! See the eldest son and hope of a proud family, educated in an atmosphere of virtue and principle, who has given promise of high and noble qualities. He falls a victim to the fashionable vice, and carries back to his hitherto untainted home the lethal influence he has imbibed. Another and another, within the range of that influence, suffers for his lapse from moral rectitude, and they in turn become the agents and disseminators of fresh evils. This promiscuous association is tacitly regarded as a necessary evil, the suppression of which would produce alarming and disastrous effects upon the community at large. The passions, indolence, and the love of dress and display are the main agents in producing the class of women we have under consideration. It is a vulgar error and a popular delusion, that the life of a fallen woman is as revolting to herself as it appears to the moralist and philanthropist. Authors of vivid imagination love to portray the misery that is brought on an innocent and confiding girl by the perfidy and desertion of her seducer. The stage presents the picture with all its accessories of light, color and morbid emotion. The pulpit takes up the theme and howls its evangelical horrors, picturing those women as being a continuous prey to "the long-beaked, filthy vulture of unending despair." Women who in youth have lost their virtue, often contrive to retain their reputation, and even when this is not the case, frequently amalgamate with the purer portion of the population, and become, to all outward appearance, good members of society.