otherwise; and the mother’s share should be for her benefit as an emigration-fund or marriage-portion.” “We cannot imagine,” says another authority, “that anyone can seriously suppose that prostitution would be made either more generally attractive or respectable by the greater decency and decorum which administrative supervision would compel it to throw over its exterior. We know that the absence of these does not deter one of irregular passions from the low pursuit; and we know, moreover, wherever these are needed for the behoof of a more scrupulous and refined class of fornicators, they are to be found. We are convinced also that much of the permanent ruin to the feelings and character which results from the habit of visiting the haunts of prostitution is to be attributed to the coarse language and the brutal manners which prevail there; and that this vice, like many others, would lose much of its evil by losing all of grossness that is separable from it. Nor do we fear that the improvement in the _tone_ of prostitution which would thus result would render its unhappy victims less anxious to escape from it. Soften its horrors and gild its loathsomeness as you may, there will always remain enough to revolt all who are not wholly lost. Much too—everything almost—is gained, if you can retain _any_ degree of self-respect among the fallen. The more of this that remains, the greater chance is there of ultimate redemption; it is always a mistaken and a cruel policy to allow vice to grow desperate and reckless.” It is for the interest of society at large, as well as for that of the guilty individual, that we should never break down the bridge behind such a sinner as the miserable “unfortunate” even. V.—The Curse of Drunkenness. CHAPTER XX. ITS POWER. _The crowning Curse_—_No form of sin or sorrow in which it does not play a part_—_The_ “_Slippery Stone_” _of Life_—_Statistics_—_Matters not growing worse_—_The Army Returns_—_The System of Adulteration_.