In sharp contrast to the misery and privation which present themselves on the side of virtue, is the luxurious ease of a life of vice. Is it any wonder that the weak girl chooses this latter path? It seems broad and smooth and tempting to the feet. The other is dark and narrow, with sharp thorns in the way and no sunshine ahead. So the girl enters upon the course which a thousand have trod before her, only to bring up at the inevitable goal of wretchedness and despair. She cannot see the end at the beginning of her career. For a time she finds all rosy and delightful. She lives in a whirl of excitement. If, now and then, memories of the past--thoughts of home and friends thrust themselves before her mind, she resolutely crushes them out with the bitter reflection that those who should have been her protectors have cast her aside. She follows the gay life for a brief time, drinks in the intoxicating pleasures of the moment, and awakens, sooner or later, to find herself stripped of her beauty, forsaken, and without a refuge except that offered by gracious death. This picture is no exaggeration. It finds its counterpart in nature every hour of every day of every year. Now, think for a moment how differently this girl's life might have been shaped had her first offense been forgiven. Suppose the parents of the girl had said to her upon the discovery of her first wayward step: "You have been tempted, and the temptation has proved greater than you can bear. But we will forgive and forget. Let the past be wiped out forever. Your life is still before you, and you may redeem yourself yet. Our love shall cover your sin, and you shall still be to us a beloved and loving child." Words like these would save many a woman from a life of shame, but words like these are too rarely spoken. Are those Christians who are so ready to hurl the first stone? Have they forgotten the words of Him who bade Magdalen of old to "Go, sin no more?" The common error is to assume that when a woman once loses her virtue, she thereby forfeits all claims to respect. With men sin is smoothed over, and sometimes even admired. Stokes commits murder, and at the end of his term of imprisonment returns to New York, mingles in the gay society which knew him of old, and gazes critically through his opera-glasses from the box of the theatre. He has committed a crime, to be sure, he is an ex-convict, and all that; but society does not hesitate to receive him back with open arms. The worst libertine that walks the earth may still hold his head erect in the charmed circles of aristocratic society. But the woman who once goes astray is lost forever. The taint of suspicion is about her, and, strive as she may, the doors of respectability, of decency, of an honest life, are barred against her.