"I beg you now to take a good look at this young woman--young, but old enough to know what she, is doing. You will not discover in her appearance, gentlemen, any marks of the adventuress. But you are men of too much experience not to know that the adventuress does not reveal her marks. As for my client, he is a perfectly innocent man. Worse than innocent; he is, on account of a certain inborn weakness, a rather helpless human being whenever his sympathies are appealed to, or if anyone looks at him pleasantly, or but speaks a kind word. In a moment of such weakness he yielded to this woman's appeal to his sympathies. At once she converted his generosity into a claim, and now she has begun to press that claim. But that is an old story: the greater your kindness to certain people, the more certain they become that your kindness is simply their due. The better you are, the worse you must have been. Your present virtues are your acknowledgment of former shortcomings. It has become the design of this adventuress--my client having once shown her unmerited kindness--it has now become her apparent design to force upon him the responsibility of her support and her welfare. "You know how often this is done in New York City, which is not only Babylon for the adventurer and adventuress, but their Garden of Eden, since here they are truly at large with the serpent. You are aware that the adventuress never operates, except in a large city, just as the charlatan of every profession operates in the large city. Little towns have no adventuresses and no charlatans; they are not to be found there because there they would be found out. What I ask is that you protect my client as you would have my client, were he a juryman, help to protect innocent men like you. I ask then that this woman be sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars and be further sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary for a term of one year. "No, I do not ask that. For this young woman is not yet a bad woman. But unless she stops right here in her career, she is likely to become a bad woman. I do ask that you sentence her to pay a few tears of penitence and to go home, and there be strictly confined to wiser, better thoughts." When I had dictated this, I asked her to read it over to me; she did so in faltering tones. Then I bade her good morning, said there was no more work for the day, instructed her that when she was through with copying the work already assigned, the head-clerk would receive it and pay for it, and requested her to return at ten o'clock this morning. This morning she did not come. I called up her address; she had left there. Nothing was known of her. If you ever write to her again--! And since you, without visible means of support, are so fond of sending cheques to everybody, why not send one to me! Am I to go on defending you for nothing? Your obedient counsel and turtle, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE