“TO THE AGED AND UNPROTECTED.—A young man, aged twenty-two, well-built, good-looking, and of a frank and affectionate disposition, is desirous of acting the part of a son towards any aged person or persons who would regard his companionship and constant devotion as an equivalent for his maintenance and clothes and support generally. The parents of the advertiser are both dead, and he has not a relative in the wide world. Affluence is not aimed at, no more than that degree of comfort that moderate means insure. Address, O. D., —.” Although it is difficult without a struggle to feel an interest in this young gentleman’s welfare, we cannot help feeling curious to know what success his advertisement brought him. Is he still a forlorn orphan, wasting his many virtues and manly attributes on a world that to him is a wilderness; or has he happily succeeded in captivating “some aged person or persons,” and is he at the present time acting the part of a son towards them, and growing sleek and fat “on that degree of comfort that moderate means insure”? Were his initials J. D. instead of O. D., we might imagine that it was our ancient friend Jeremiah Diddler turned up once more. O. D. stand for Old Diddler, but Jeremiah the ancient must be aged considerably more than twenty-two. We may rest assured, however, that the advertiser is an offshoot of that venerable family. IV.—Fallen Women. CHAPTER XVI. THIS CURSE. _The Difficulty in handling it_—_The Question of its Recognition_—_The Argyll Rooms_—_Mr. Acton’s visit there_—_The Women and their Patrons_—_The Floating Population of Windmill-street_—_Cremorne Gardens in the Season_. THE only explanation that can be offered to the supersensitive reader, who will doubtless experience a shock of alarm at discovering this page’s heading, is, that it would be simply impossible to treat with any pretension to completeness of the curses of London without including it. Doubtless it is a curse, the mere mention of which, let alone its investigation, the delicate-minded naturally shrinks from. But it is a matter for congratulation, perhaps, that we are not all so delicate-minded. Cowardice is not unfrequently mistaken for daintiness of nature. It is so with the subject in question. It is not a pleasant subject—very far from it; but that is not a sufficient excuse for letting it alone. We should never forget that it is our distaste for meddling with unsavoury business that does not immediately and personally concern us, that is the evil-doers’ armour of impunity. The monstrous evil in question has grown to its present dimensions chiefly because we have silently borne with it and let it grow up in all its lusty rankness under our noses; and rather than pluck it up by the roots, rather than acknowledge its existence even, have turned away our heads and inclined our eyes skyward, and thanked God for the many mercies conferred on us.