the rest." "Why did you not strike the villain dead at your feet?" "That is savage nature." "Why not arrest and punish him, then, for his attempt at rape?" "That is civilized nature." "What then did you do?" "I forgave him, and bade him repent, and ask God to forgive him, as I did." "Lovetree, give me your hand, I give you my heart; I stand rebuked. I understand you now, that was Christian nature. Let us go." Reader, walk with us. We threaded our way along the crowded side-walk, passing or meeting, between the Astor House and Canal street, not less than fifty girls; some of them not over twelve years old, many about fourteen or fifteen, some of them superbly beautiful, naturally or artificially, and all, such as the spirit, hovering over the poor shipwrecked mariner upon the stormy ocean, cries wildly to, as they sink, down, down, to death, "lost, lost, lost!" "Why, why, tell me why they are permitted to roam through the streets, plying their seductive arts? Where are your police? Where your city Fathers?--guardians of the morals of strangers and citizens! How can anything, male or female, remain pure in such an atmosphere of impurity? Where are your laws? laws of love that lift up the fallen. Where all your high-paid, well-fed city guardians, who should watch the city youth, to keep them from becoming impure?" Echo gave the answer, and it reverberated back and forth from granite wall to freestone, from marble front to red-burnt bricks, from dark cellar to gas-lighted hall, from low dens of death to high rooms of wealth and fashion, from law makers to law breakers; echo came back with that one word, "Impure, impure, impure."