If a fox or a mink come down to the farmyard and carry off a chicken, the whole family join in the search. If a panther come down into the village and carry off a child, the whole neighborhood go out with clubs and guns to bring it down. But this monster-crime goes forth, carrying off body and soul; and yet, if we speak, a thousand voices bid us be silent. I shall try to cut to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the _post-mortem_ of this carcass of death. It is time to speak on this subject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city goes howling after her. She shall take the whole blame. Out with her from all decent circles! Whip her. Flay her. Bar all the doors of society against her return. Set on her all the blood-hounds. Shove her off precipice after precipice. Push her down. Kick her out! If you see her struggling on the waves, and with her blood-tipped fingers clinging to the verge of respectability, drop a mill-stone on her head. For a woman's sin, men have no mercy; and the heart of other women is more cruel than death. For her, in the dark hour of her calamity, the women who, with the same temptation, might have fallen into deeper damnation, have no commiseration and no prayer. The heaviest stroke that comes down upon a fallen woman's soul is the merciless indignation of her sisters. If the multitudes of the fallen could be placed in a straight line, it would reach from here to the gates of the lost, and back again. But what of the destroyer? We take his arm. We flatter his appearance. We take off our hats. He is admitted to our parlors. For him we cast our votes. For him we speak our eulogies. And when he has gone we read over the heap of compost: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labors and their works do follow them." In the fashionable city to-day there walk a thousand libertines. They are a moving pest. Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their bones have in them the decay of the pit. They have the eye of a basilisk. They have been soaked in filth, and steeped in uncleanliness, and consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of the robe of one of these elegant gentlemen, and pull it aside, and say, "Behold a Leper!" First, if you desire to shun this evil, you will have nothing to do with bad books and impure newspapers. With such an affluent literature as is coming forth from our swift-revolving printing-presses, there is no excuse for dragging one's self through sewers of unchastity. Why walk in the ditch, when right beside the ditch is the solid flagging? It seems that in the literature of the day the ten plagues of Egypt have returned, and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over our parlor tables.