brows, and cheeks from which the roses of virgin shame had been plucked
to bloom no more forever--mostly young girls, scourging their youth into
old age, and gathering poison at once for soul and body--with sensual
indolence reclined upon the rich ottomans, or with fantastic grace
whirled through lewd waltzes over the velvet carpets. There was laughter
without joy--there was frivolity without merriment--there was the
surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted
cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those
whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were
aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with
habitual sin.

Yet there, like a crushed pearl upon a heap of garbage, lingers the
trace of beauty; and there, surely, though sepulchred in the caverns of
vice, dwells something that was once innocence, and not unredeemable.
But whence is the friendly word to come, whence the guardian hand that
might lift them from the slough. They live accursed by even charity,
shunned by philanthropy, and shut from the Christian world like a tribe
of lepers whose touch is contagion and whose breath is pestilence. In
the glittering halls of fashion, the high-born beauty, with wreaths
about her white temples and diamonds upon her chaste bosom, gives her
gloved hand for the dance, and forgets that an erring sister, by the
touch of those white fingers, might be raised from the grave of her
chastity, and clothed anew with the white garments of repentance. But
no; the cold world of fashion, that from its cushioned pew has listened
with stately devotion to the words of the Redeemer, has taught her that
to redeem the fallen is beneath her caste. The bond of sisterhood is
broken. The lost one must pursue her hideous destiny, each avenue of
escape blocked by the scorn and loathing which denies her the contact of
virtue and the counsel of purity. In the broad fields of charity,