Those of you who have had personal experience of these women will not need me to tell you that _they_ never pay low wages. The washerwomen and starchers whom they employ are always well paid and well treated. They give much in charity to save others, as they often say, from their fate, and doubtless in the secret hope that God will permit them thus to atone for their sin. A few years ago, three young girls lived together in Glasgow. One of them, the youngest and frailest, a girl whose story was like that of Mrs. Gaskell's "Ruth," had left a rural home for a dressmaker's workroom. She fell into a decline, and, in her frequent delirium, raved about the bleat of her father's sheep, the evening cow-bell, and the crowing of the cock. In her lucid moments, the thought that she must die in shame convulsed her with agony. The two remaining girls took counsel. "There is no hope for us," they said; "but perhaps God will forgive us if we save her. Let us send her into the country, and work for her till she dies." And so they did, adding to the reckless wear of their horrid life the toil of the needlewoman; but, believe me, they never forgot the dying smile of her they had saved. Did you or I ever make a sacrifice which would compare with that? It is painful for me to stand here, and present this subject; it is, perhaps, painful for you to listen: but, with such women among the ruined, only cowards, it seems to me, would refuse to risk all things to save them.[15] In France, where all women of this class are registered, Duchâtelet found 1,680 who had erased their names from the list, on the plea that they had found honest occupation. He traced them: 108 had become housekeepers; 864, seamstresses; 247, shopkeepers; and 461, domestics. The Society for the Rescue of Young Women, in London, admitted two hundred members last year. It asks no questions of those who enter; and the wisdom of this is shown in the fact, that its subscription-list contains the names of sixty former inmates, whose subscriptions range from twenty-five cents to twenty dollars per annum. A terrible account has lately been published of the straw-bonnet warehouses in London, by one who has worked in them. One single story will show you, how that _touch of truth_, which, far more than the touch of genius, makes the "whole world kin," revealed a noble human nature in the midst of what seemed utter depravity.