In inferior circles, where no leading minds preside, it would be as it is now: there would be much idle prating, much foolish delay, much inconsequent discussion; but woman is quick to recognize genius, to listen when wisdom speaks. She chatters, to be sure, in the presence of fools; but, when earnest men come to know the value of her enthusiasm, they will never be willing to lose it. When the great door of the scholarly and scientific retreat is once thrown open, you will be surprised to see the crowd ready to enter; and, when the sexes kindle into intellectual life together, many a woman's coals will be modestly laid upon an honored altar, and the flames will rise all the higher because they have been so fed. How can we estimate sufficiently the corrupting influence of the newspapers of the land? We may hope your prejudices will defend woman here, and you will acknowledge that the minds cannot be kept pure before whom their details are set. Let us go farther, and say that they cannot be kept pure, coming in contact as they do with minds among men that gloat over such records. God is just, and his compensations are terrible. If you do not spare the purity of the lowest in the land, you cannot save that of your wife and daughter. If you will not protect the vulgar against themselves, you cannot protect the refined against the vulgar. He is not a pure man, who, among his fellows, thinks a thought or utters a word he would blush to have his sister hear. She is not a pure woman, who, in the seclusion of her chamber, or gossip with her household, omits one of the proprieties which delicacy requires. She has no title to _our_ respect, who is not secure in _her own_. How can we reach such a standard as this, if we invite pollution daily across our threshold, and call it harmless because it dresses in printer's ink? It is not enough that much of the obscenity is pure invention. The profit of the scandal overbalances the cost of the libel. The simplest item is turned to gross account. Even the intimation that the postmaster has placed a woman at the ladies' window in New York has to be coupled with the insinuation that she would have "done better at the gentlemen's." What business have you or I with details that concern only judge and jury? What good does it do society to quote high legal authority upon "flirtation," unless, indeed, we learn thereby to estimate aright the corrupting power of the first wrong step? Police reports, vulgar anecdotes, shocking accidents, and trivial gossip a child might be ashamed to repeat, make up the mass of our daily sheets. Happy is the editor who offers three columns of common sense daily to his readers. When, alas! shall we have a public willing to pay for common sense and pure reading alone?