arrayed in costly garments and costlier jewels. Beside these carrion birds of beauteous plumage the poor man’s wife or daughter looks like a daw. Other forms of crime skulk in the daylight, coming forth only when the dark hours favor their calling, but these birds of prey hang out the signs of their nefarious calling at high noon, and strut the streets shaming the honest and demoralizing the weak. The girl who has worked all day until brain and fingers and limbs are tired, returning homewards at nightfall, compares her uneventful, dreary lot with the seemingly joyous existence of these women, looks at her own shabby gown and at their rich ones, and inwardly wonders if honesty, truth and worth are, after all, the best. The foolish youth who returns their smiles as he passes them on the pavement does not know that that little gloved hand is as cruel as the tiger’s claws. That mother realized that the other day when she heard her eighteen-year-old boy doomed to wear the disgraceful livery of a convict. But her heartrending sobs did not ruffle a lace on the stony front of the fair-haired, showy enchantress, to buy whose mercenary caresses he had robbed his employer. He was a smooth-cheeked, good-looking, clean-limbed boy, with candor marked in every line of his face. His deeds found no record in the straightforward look of his blue eyes. But drag him away from his mourning mother, policeman, and let him break his spirit among the other jail-birds. Let Circe go free and entice other boys into her toils. She didn’t know he was stealing the goods—no, not she. Yes, let her go free, but before she goes to sleep each night let her think of a room wherein another woman stands in DUMB, TEARLESS AGONY, before the picture of her son. Let there be no desire, however, to lessen that son’s infamy who forgot a mother’s love and a sister’s devotion for the smiles of a harlot. “There is a great deal of soft-hearted nonsense talked about these women of the town,” said a gentleman connected with the Society for the Prevention of Vice. “My firm conviction is that not one in ten is deserving of any more sympathy than we give to other criminals. People talk about men’s brutal instincts and women’s weakness, but a long experience and a good deal of thought on the subject has brought me the conclusion that not one quarter of the bad women of this city have drifted into their present lives through deceit on the part of men. What I mean to say is that in the fall of the majority of those women they had an equal share of sin with the men.” “Oh, you take a cynical view of the matter. You know well the lengths to which some men will go to accomplish their purposes. They seize some weak point in their victim and work upon that. If they capture her affections under promise of marriage they accomplish their purpose. If she is fond of dress or ornaments the rich libertine captures her by rich presents.”