When she turned to the next social stratum she found altars of mammon-groves of Baal, shining Schoe Dagonset up by business men and women of fashion. Society appeared intent only upon reviving the offering to propitiate evil spirits; and sometimes it seemed thickly sprinkled with very thinly disguised refugee Yezidees, who, in the East, openly worshipped the Devil. Statesmen were almost extinct in America--a mere corporal's guard remained, battling desperately to save the stabbed constitution from howling demagogues and fanatics, who raved and ranted where Washington, Webster, and Calhoun had once swayed a free and happy people. The old venerated barriers and well-guarded outposts, which decorum and true womanly modesty had erected on the frontiers of propriety, were swept away in the crevasse of sans souci manners that threatened to inundate the entire land; and latitudinarianism in dress and conversation was rapidly reducing the sexes to an equality, dangerous to morals and subversive of all chivalric respect for woman. A double-faced idol, fashion and flirtation, engrossed the homage of the majority of females, while a few misguided ones, weary of the inanity of the mass of womanhood and desiring to effect a reform, mistook the sources of the evil, and, rushing to the opposite extreme, demanded power, which as a privilege they already possessed, but as a right could not extort. A casual glance at the surface of society seemed to justify Burke's conclusion, that "this earth is the bedlam of our system"; but Edna looked deeper, and found much that encouraged her, much that warmed and bound her sympathies to her fellow-creatures. Instead of following the beaten track she struck out a new path, and tried the plan of denouncing the offence, not the offender; of attacking the sin while she pitied the sinner. Ruthlessly she assaulted the darling follies, the pet, velvet-masked vices that society had adopted, and called the reading world to a friendly parley; demanding that men and women should pause and reflect in their mad career. Because she was earnest and not bitter, because the white banner of Christian charity floated over the conference ground, because she showed so clearly that she loved the race whose recklessness grieved her, because her rebukes were free from scorn, and written rather in tears than gall, people turned their heads and stopped to listen. So it came to pass that finally, after toiling over many obstacles, she reached the vine-clad valley of Eshcol.