They see that they are despised and cursed, but for what they are
thus despised they cannot comprehend. Their life, from childhood,
has been spent among just such women, who, as they very well know,
always have existed, and are indispensable to society, and so
indispensable that there are governmental officials to attend to
their legal existence. Moreover, they know that they have power over
men, and can bring them into subjection, and rule them often more
than other women. They see that their position in society is
recognized by women and men and the authorities, in spite of their
continual curses, and therefore, they cannot understand why they
should reform.

In the course of one of the tours, one of the students told me that
in a certain lodging, there was a woman who was bargaining for her
thirteen-year-old daughter. Being desirous of rescuing this girl, I
made a trip to that lodging expressly. Mother and daughter were
living in the greatest poverty. The mother, a small, dark-
complexioned, dissolute woman of forty, was not only homely, but
repulsively homely. The daughter was equally disagreeable. To all
my pointed questions about their life, the mother responded curtly,
suspiciously, and in a hostile way, evidently feeling that I was an
enemy, with evil intentions; the daughter made no reply, did not look
at her mother, and evidently trusted the latter fully. They inspired
me with no sincere pity, but rather with disgust. But I made up my
mind that the daughter must be rescued, and that I would interest
ladies who pitied the sad condition of these women, and send them
hither. But if I had reflected on the mother's long life in the
past, of how she had given birth to, nursed and reared this daughter
in her situation, assuredly without the slightest assistance from
outsiders, and with heavy sacrifices--if I had reflected on the view