wealth and position and fame, claim virtue as all their own, it seems,
that vice and error thrive only where poverty and ignorance and
destitution abide, is this so? Ye who know the secrets of a fashionable
world, ye, who have seen laid bare, the hearts full of secrets of
pampered ladies, and pretentious dames, say, are they so guileless, so
spotless, so blameless as society would have them? Is it only the poor
seamstress, or the working-girl that is human enough to err? Is it only
the breast which heaves under tatters and rags, that bears the impress
of the trembling hand that has struck the _"mea culpa"_ in its woe? O, I
doubt it, I for one deny it. True it is, painfully, shamefully true it
is, that the "nobodies" of the world who meet misfortune are mercilessly
forced to stand in the corridors of time, that those, who domineer in
virtue, may ostentatiously compassionate them, but will such a paltry
show of charity as this, blind the world, as it tries to do? Let us hope
not. Let the pampered daughter of wealth and social fame, who goes
astray, share the pitiless fate of the beggar who does likewise, or,
better still, let the beggar be shown such mercy, and justification and
pardon as is granted her sister in high life. In the sight of God crime
is the one color, why not so with men? If anything, vice repels far more
forcibly, when attired in its velvets and silks, than when it looks out
from scanty rags, which after all, may be turned more easily to sack
cloth. Who can doubt that there are hundreds of outcasts, living in
persistent wrong doing, on account of this lack of humanity, this total
abstinence of Christian charity, whose exercise could redeem just as
many as its scarcity ruins. Poor foolish souls! Why need they thirst for
mercy or sympathy that is human, know they not, that they are as
justified in spurning the world's great ones, as those great ones are in
spurning them. What can human mercy avail them, after all, is there not
a Good Shepherd, so eager, so ready, so anxious to grant forgiveness for
the asking? Why do ye not seek Him, ye whom a rigorous society has cast