I may not lay claim to being the discoverer of this well-written outburst of manly indignation. It is quoted by a gentleman—a medical gentleman—who has inquired deeper and written more to the real purpose on this painful subject than any other writer with whom I am acquainted. I allude to Dr. Acton. The volume that contains it is of necessity not one that might be introduced to the drawing-room, but it is one that all thinking men would do well to procure and peruse. Dr. Acton handles a tremendously difficult matter masterly and courageously; and while really he is of as delicate a mind as a lady, he does not scruple to enunciate his honest convictions respecting the prevalent evil of prostitution, as though it were an evil as commonly recognised and as freely discussed as begging or thieving. In his introductory pages he says: “To those who profess a real or fictitious ignorance of prostitution, its miseries and its ill-effects, and those again who plead conscience for inaction, I have this one reply. Pointing to the outward signs of prostitution in our streets and hospitals, I inquire whether we can flatter ourselves that the subject has drifted into a satisfactory state on the ‘know-nothing’ and ‘do-nothing’ principle. I hint at the perilous self-sufficiency of the Pharisee, and the wilful blindness of the Levite who ‘passed by on the other side,’ and I press upon them that, after reading this work and testing its author’s veracity, they should either refute its arguments or be themselves converted. . . . I have little to say in the way of apology for my plain-speaking. The nature of the subject has forced this upon me. To have called things here treated of by another than their right name would have been in any writer an absurdity, in me a gross one. The experiences I have collected may to optimists and recluses appear exaggerated. The visions I have indulged in may be hard to grasp. But this more complicated knot demands a swordsman, not an infant. The inhabitants of a provincial city demanded of Lord Palmerston that the angel of pestilence should be stayed by a day of national prayer and fasting. ‘I will fast with you and pray with you,’ was the statesman’s answer; ‘but let us also drain, scrub, wash, and be clean.’” If by this taste of the preface to Dr. Acton’s book I induce my male readers to dip into it for themselves, I shall feel that I have done the cause the worthy writer has at heart good service. It will be something if the brief quotation bespeaks attention to the other extracts from the same genuine source that herein appear. On the subject of seduction and desertion, Mr. Acton writes: