Mr. Jocelyn was not one who could sin in a conservative, prudent way. He seemed utterly unable to rally and be a man in his own strength, and his remorse over his conduct was so great that he sought a refuge in almost continuous excess. The greater the height, the more tremendous the fall, and he had now reached the recklessness of despair. He had many stolid, slouching neighbors in the tenements, who permitted life to be at least endurable for their families because of the intervals between their excesses; but an interval to Mr. Jocelyn was a foretaste of perdition. Nevertheless, if the wretched man, by a kindly violence, could have been shut up and away for weeks, perhaps months, from all possibility of obtaining the poisons that were destroying him, and treated with scientific skill, he might have been saved even at this late hour. When the world recognizes that certain vices sooner or later pass from the character of voluntary evil into the phase of involuntary disease, and should be treated rigorously and radically under the latter aspect, many lives and homes will be saved from final wreck. No principles are better known than the influences of soil, climate, darkness, and light upon a growing plant. If the truth could be appreciated that circumstances color life and character just as surely, marring, distorting, dwarfing, or beautifying and developing, according as they are friendly or adverse, the workers in the moral vineyard, instead of trying to obtain fruit from sickly vines, whose roots grope in sterility, and whose foliage is poisoned, would bring the richness of opportunity to the soil and purify the social atmosphere. Immature Belle, in spite of all the influences for good from her mother, her sister, and Roger, could scarcely reside where she did and grow pure and womanly. She was daily compelled to see and hear too much that was coarse, evil, and debasing. She knew that Roger was a friend, and nothing more--that his whole heart was absorbed in Mildred--and her feminine nature, stimulated by the peculiarities of her lot, craved warmer attentions. In her impoverished condition, and with her father's character becoming generally known, such attentions would not naturally come from young men whom those who loved her best could welcome. She was growing restless under restrictions, and her crowded, half-sheltered life was robbing her of womanly reserve. These undermining influences worked slowly, imperceptibly, but none the less certainly, and she recognized the bold, evil admiration which followed her more and more unshrinkingly. Mr. Jocelyn's condition was no longer a secret, and he often, in common with other confirmed habitues, increased the effects of opium by a free use of liquor. He therefore had practically ceased to be a protector to his daughters. Fred and Minnie, in spite of all the broken-hearted and failing mother could do, were becoming little street Arabs, learning all too soon the evil of the world.