he can go forth into life, without fear or vexation, knowing that as the sparrow is fed he shall be fed, as the lily is clothed he shall be clothed? To hew and hack, slay and rot,—that sums up the usual life with Nature. Humboldt asked an Indian chief if he had known a certain American officer who had died in the war of 1816. "I ate a piece of him," was the reply. Similarly gastronomic is our knowledge of Nature. We are in a state of war. We slay the animal and eat it; then he goes prowling along our veins ; the bird preys in our vitals after we have preyed on it. Thus the Indian has eaten himself as wild as the beast he hunts; the Irishman has eaten himself into a kind of human potato, which must dig ditches, live in cellars, or root under ground in some other way. How easy it is by any sudden excitement to transform a Congress into a Menagerie!

XV.

Have I shown you, brother, to be an invalid among invalids, and offered you no prescription? It is because I remember the fate of Asa in Holy Writ, who when he was sick took not to the Lord, but to the physicians; of whom it is said, " And Asa slept with his fathers!"

When one loves Nature, and resolutely sets his heart to that loyal obedience by which, as Bacon said, she is commanded, he needs no prescription,- not more than the bird needs to have its path mapped out on the trackless air.

PROSTITUTION.

Ir is a fact well known to those acquainted with the history of biblical criticism, that the passage in the New Testament which records Christ's treatment of the Woman taken in Adultery was for a long time enclosed by black lines, indicating that it had best be omitted in the public readings, so that in many corrupt versions, as of the Evangelisteria, it came to be omitted altogether. It was considered dangerous that such leniency should be commended! Such we have always had in the Church

"Who, taking God's word under wise protection,

Correct its tendencies to diffusiveness."

But even now, when it stands there an inevitable portion of the New Testament, is not the black line, however invisible, still around it? Does not the Church practically draw it? — does not Society? Where else do men stand silent and paralyzed before as much evil and wretchedness? Who has a kind helpful word for such? What lady does not gather aside her skirts as the prostitute passes valuing her contempt as the halo of her virtue? By how many an action and look is the cry still uttered, "Yes, stone her to death! Heap up your anathemas and sneers; let her not touch the remotest vesture's hem ; name her not; look another way as she passes; bring forth stoniest glances, sneers and words to cast at her!"

May God pity the heart which does not stir with adoration at seeing the lordly soul rise about that poor stained spirit as a defending tower and fortress! Even that remnant of all that was a woman once shall not be crushed to the dust in his presence never so long as he walks upon the earth to seek and save that which was lost! Then and there he founded the first Home of the Outcast.

:

Outcast in that inhuman word may be shown how far we are from any similar spirit- a godless word which signifies too well

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our attitude toward the prostitute. Also the popular phrase speaks of the abandoned woman. Who has abandoned her? Not He whose sun still smiles upon her, whose sky bends pure and blue above her! None of those who have searched into this degraded life have failed to report that the woman is never extinct in the prostitute. All the writers testify to their utter self sacrifice in caring for the poor and sick whom they can approach. There is abundant evidence that they have a sense of honor and of shame, and that they acknowledge and respect purity. In addition to the many instances corroborative of this aff.mation which may be found in the works of Mayhew, Sanger and others, the writer of this paper will here give several which have come under his own observation. Having been appointed once by the City Council a commissioner for the poor during a very severe winter, we visited many wretched tenements: among these we entered one where the inmates utterly refused to accept any money. Though seeing that these were what Mr. Longworth would call the unworthy poor," we were willing to help them; but they sternly refused, saying, The city didn't mean the money for such as we." Another case the Unitarian Minister at large in St. Louis was called upon a few weeks since by the female keeper of a brothel, and told of a young woman who had been enticed from Covington, Ky., and deceived, and who was invincibly hostile to the life designed for her. This female keeper urged the minister to save her, and offered secretly to assist him, which she faithfully did, and the misguided girl was returned to her friends in Covington. Never shall we forget the expression used by a street-walker in New York, who, on the very pavements of Broadway, caught hold of our arm. We turned in horror, and there before us was a face in which every loathsome disease had set its signature. "Woman, you have been drinking," we said. "Of course I've been drinking," she replied. "And why do you besot yourself so?" "Ha, ha," she laughed, "do you think a woman would have the cheek to stop a man in the street unless she had liquor in her?" Alas, what a story did that sentence tell of THE WOMAN back there, which would cry out, which must be drugged into stillness ere the "cheek" could be despoiled of its blush, and the nameless sin committed!

But our whole social treatment seems ingeniously contrived, like some Devil's master-stroke, to bleach that "cheek" more and

more, to take sides with the brandy and burn the woman out of her as far as possible. By a complete ostracism we say, If you can not make yourself out to be snow-white, you shall be held to be jet-black." We thus consign her to that ante-chamber of Hell, Recklessness. Once let them be reckless, and the work of perdition, so far as society can carry it, is complete. The last restraining tie is snapped. What is expected of them? Nought but evil. Who cares whether they struggle to be better or not? No one. Who will venture to treat them as other than vile, even if they should be Madonnas ? None. Now they shall know the meaning of the words, Outcast, Abandoned. Society thus builds a high, smooth wall over against them, with no ladder let down-nay, with sharp spikes on it to mangle them if they should dare aspire to climb back. If they have tears to shed, or hearts that can break, let them flow, let them break on the breasts of the profligate who have ruined them! Ah, it is pitiful — indeed, it is to think how willing men and women are to let their own flesh and blood go, even to shove them on by looks of scorn and words of gall to the verge of the abyss, to shake themselves free of their clutches, to let them fall over their several precipices, to cast no glance after, but go on smiling and light-hearted to their homes and churches.

When Samuel Adams, in the olden days, came into his house one day, he saw a negro woman shivering over the fire, and asked who it was. His wife replied that it was a poor slave who had run away from her master. Then did the grand old man thunder out, "She became free when she entered that door!" We will borrow his voice for the present, and naming the prostitute here, she shall not be to us the soiled and miserable one who passes you on the street returning cursing for jeering: she shall be to us a being of awful grandeur, an immortal child of the Omnipotent, bearing his image, living by his protection; through the tatters and rags of earthly defilement we pierce to the Heaven-descended soul burning within her flame clouded, indeed, but imperishable as God.

We need not dwell on the terrible statistics of this evil. Every city of much extent has recently secured more or less perfect statistics; and in every case the return has been like the shock of an earthquake. Fathers and mothers stand aghast to find that their children are growing up and walking their daily rounds amongst

quicksands and on the edges of precipices. A thousand, openly declared, walk the streets of our own city; and the number ascertained is known to be but a small proportion to the number veiled under that secrecy with which this vice of all others most conceals its deformities. It is only in the lowest steps of the descending scale that it can be investigated. When so much is known, one may well shudder at the unknown. What we have learned, however, is sufficient to establish a few general facts and laws attendant on this vice, which it is well we should discern and confront.

1. The majority of prostitutes are between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

2. One-fifth, on the average, are married women.

3. Half of these have children growing up around them and under their influence. Many of these children live in abodes of vice. The mortality among them is four times greater than that among other children in cities.

4. Nearly one-half of these women are sufferers from the most fearful and infectious diseases.

5. The average duration of a prostitute's life is only four about one-eighth of the average of life's duration!

years

6. Education, even rudimental, is very rare among them. 7. Six-sevenths of them drink intoxicating liquors.

8. In New York City there are more than eight thousand prostitutes, officially known; and the annual expenditure on account of the evil is more than $7,000,000. And the proportion is about the same to the population in the other American cities.

9. The causes which have led them to this course of life range as follows: 1. Destitution; 2. Seduction, generally under promise of marriage; 3. Ill-treatment by parents, husbands, or relatives; 4. Ill-assorted marriages; 5. Intemperance; 6. Bad company.

- Let us pause on these causes, which are, after all, the most important to us, since Causes, clearly seen, imply Remedies. Nearly all of these causes may be comprehended under the first one named. Destitution is the poisonous tap-root of Prostitution in our cities. Starvation lashes the woman into the street. Want makes her an easy prey to the seducer with his promises of plenty. Ill-assorted marriages come generally of the eagerness to seize on anything which seems, by offering a support, to save, whilst it really brings new temptations. This is an ascertained and im