IT is easy enough to understand, if one finds the courage to face this worst of all social evils, and inquire calmly into the many shapes its origin takes, how very possible it is that there may be living in a state of depravity scores and hundreds of women who are what they are out of no real _fault_ of their own. “Then why do they not turn, and reform their infamous lives?” the indignant reader may ask. “They may if they will. Is there not this, that, and the other asylum open to them?” Perhaps so. Only perhaps. But for reasons hinted at in the commencement of this chapter, it might be clearly enough shown that, “this, that, and t’other,” to a very large extent, really and truly represent the substantiality of the asylums to which the curse is admitted for purgation. We have foolishly and blindly ignored the evil, and consequently we have not been free to provide adequately for the reception of those who have lived in it, and are now desirous of returning, if they may, to decent life. We have some asylums of the kind; but in capacity they are about as well adapted to perform the prodigious amount of work ready for them as a ten-gallon filter would be to purify the muddy waters of the Thames. Undoubtedly there are thousands of debased and wanton wretches for whom the doors of such houses of reform and refuge, did they exist in plenty, might in vain stand open. But let the reader for a moment consider how many there are at this moment whose fall was mainly due to misplaced trust and foolish confidence, and who are kept in their degradation out of a sort of mad and bitter spite against themselves. As everyone can vouch who has taken an interest in these fallen ones, and kindly questioned them on their condition and their willingness to turn from it, nothing is more common in their mouths than the answer, “I don’t care. It’s a life good enough for me. A pretty image I should appear in well-bred company, shouldn’t I? It’s no use your preaching to me. I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it.” And it would be found in countless cases that these poor wretches did not in the original “make their bed,” as they call it, and that it reveals a wonderful amount of forgiving and generosity in them to profess that they did. If we could discover the truth, we might get at the real bed-makers—the villanous conjurers of couches of roses that were so speedily to turn to thorns and briars—in the seducer and the base deserter. If ever the Legislature finds courage enough to take up this great question in earnest, it is to be hoped that ample provision will be made for the proper treatment of the heartless scoundrel. As says a writer in an old number of the _Westminster Review_: