must not deny that at least nine thousand out of the ten fall through
the vanity you have systematically flattered, or the promises you have
treacherously broken); yes, it is true that your wickedness is its own
punishment. Your forms degraded and your eyes clouded by secret sin;
natural harmony broken and fineness of perception destroyed in your
mental and bodily organization; God and love shut out from your hearts
by the foul visitants you have permitted there; incapable of pure
marriage; incapable of pure parentage; incapable of worship; O
wretched men, your sin is its own punishment! You have lost the world
in losing yourselves. Who ruins another has admitted the worm to the
root of his own tree, and the fuller ye fill the cup of evil, the
deeper must be your own bitter draught. But I speak not to you--you
need to teach and warn one another. And more than one voice rises in
earnestness. And all that _women_ say to the heart that has once
chosen the evil path is considered prudery, or ignorance, or perhaps a
feebleness of nature which exempts from similar temptations.

But to you, women, American women, a few words may not be addressed in
vain. One here and there may listen.

You know how it was in the Oriental clime, One man, if wealth
permitted, had several wives and many handmaidens. The chastity and
equality of genuine marriage, with "the thousand decencies that flow"
from its communion, the precious virtues that gradually may be matured
within its enclosure, were unknown.

But this man did not wrong according to his light. What he did, he
might publish to God and Man; it was not a wicked secret that hid in
vile lurking-places and dens, like the banquets of beasts of prey.
Those women were not lost, not polluted in their own eyes, nor those