Loss of reputation hinders a girl from getting a situation, even when she is willing to drop her way of living and revert to steady work. People who pay well quite naturally prefer not to make an experiment and seek to have their money's worth, which implies not only an efficient, but a steady and reliable worker. The situations open to the penitent, therefore, are those which are worst paid. When she gains a character she may obtain more remunerative occupation elsewhere. She recognises that on account of her bad reputation she has to do more work for less money, but she does not so readily admit that it is just that it should be so. She thinks that it is one thing for an ordinary person to take advantage of her needs and to underpay her, while it is quite another thing for a Christian institution to keep her working for insufficient wages. In the home she has as hard work and almost as little liberty as she would have were she in prison. Her associates are girls like herself, with whom she can converse on a basis of equality and discourse on life from a similar standpoint. On the other hand, she is preached to, patronised by visitors, entertained in a very proper manner, and taught in a thousand indirect ways that she is different from them. If her associates do not help her to forget her past, neither do her teachers. They want to be kind, and try to be considerate; the effort is obvious. In a gentle way they may tell the girls what they think of them and how much need there is for their reformation, and they do not seem to see that they would come more closely in contact with those they seek to help if they would assume the things they express by word and attitude, and try to draw the girls out. The defect in the teacher is too often a habit of talking at his pupils. The girls are there to learn; the visitors to teach. Are they? What do the girls learn, and what do the visitors teach? That we are all sinners and our position a perilous one; that some of us have been found out and that the penalty should be accepted humbly as being for our good, and so on. If the formula is somewhat stereotyped that is not my fault. The girls who appear to submit most patiently are naturally regarded as most hopeful. What they think about it all does not appear to be considered of much importance. They are wrong or they would not be there; and yet a girl may make a mess of her life in one direction, and be none the less qualified to give a shrewd and useful opinion on the causes of her failure. If those who seek to teach them had less faith in their own doctrine and more desire to learn, they would become less ignorant and would teach to better purpose. Here and there some know this, and acting on the knowledge, are more successful than others who are equally pious, equally well-intentioned, but less well-informed.