the pretty shop girl, the girl with some honest employment, but poor, undefended, needing relief in her hard-working life. It is always the poor girl that he seeks. She has no pleasures, he offers them; her virtue is weak, he undermines it; he gains her affection and betrays it, changes her for another and another, leaving each mistress worse than he found her, farther on in the downward road, with the guilt of fresh injury from the strong to the weak on his soul. Any reproach of conscience--conscience which will speak when an innocent girl has been betrayed, or one not yet fully corrupted has been led farther on in evil life--is quieted by the frivolous answer: ‘They will soon marry in their own class.’ If, however, this sin be regarded in its inevitable consequences, its effects upon the life of both man and woman in relation to society, the nature of this sophistry will appear in its hideous reality. Is chastity really a virtue, something precious in womanhood? Then, the poor man’s home should be blessed by the presence of a pure woman. Does it improve a woman’s character to be virtuous? Has she more self-respect in consequence? Does she care more for her children, for their respectability and welfare, when she is conscious of her own honest past life? Does she love her husband more, and will she strive to make his home brighter and more attractive to him, exercising patience in the trials of her humble life, being industrious, frugal, sober, with tastes that centre in her home? These are vital questions for the welfare of the great mass of the people, and consequently of society and of the nation. We know, on the contrary, as a fundamental truth, that unchastity unfits a woman for these natural duties. It fosters her vanity, it makes her slothful or reckless, it gives her tastes at variance with home life, it makes her see nothing in men but their baser passions, and it converts her into a constant tempter of those passions--a corrupter of the young. We know that drunkenness, quarrels, and crimes have their origin in the wretched homes of the poor, and the centre of those unhappy homes is the unchaste woman, who has lost the restraining influence of her own self-respect, her respect for others, and her love of home. When a pretty, vain girl is tempted to sin, a wife and mother is being ruined, discord and misery are being prepared for a poor man’s home, and the circumstances created out of which criminals grow. Nor does the evil stop there. It returns to the upper classes. Nurses, servants, bring back to the respectable home the evil associations of their own lives. The children of the upper classes are thus corrupted, and the path of youth is surrounded at every step with coarse temptations. These consequences may not be foreseen when the individual follows the course of evil customs, but the sequence of events is inevitable, and every man gives birth to a fresh series of vice and misery when he takes a mistress instead of a wife.[29]