STATE H0RTICUL1UKAL SOCIETY. 343 



may embrace a prostitute as a prostitute, and society feels no shock, nor a 

 limb of tlie law be foi.nd on his trail, but let a man and woman, though 

 ever so virtuous, start life together as man and wife without legal permit 

 and society is shocked, and law venders are howling on their track. Was 

 it for crime? No. Nature and society allow men and women to live 

 together as man and wife. It was illegality — the letter of the law, that 

 had not been complied with. But if she had been a regular charatered 

 prostitute, and he a regular attendant at her den, no criminality would 

 have attached, nor an ©utburst of public indignation been heard. And in 

 no case does criminality attach to the man for lewd association. All in- 

 dignation for such acts falls on the heads of erring women; the accom- 

 plice, the man, goes scot free, with no stain on his character in the esti- 

 mation of society. But if the keeper of a lewd house has no charter, 

 community feels a shock at its mention, the law leechers or a mob are 

 called out to imprison, demolish or drive away. And what for? For 

 keeping an illegal house, and nothing more ; for if she had had a charter 

 she would not have been disturbed, nor would society have felt a shock — 

 certain a private brothel is no greater nuisance than a chartered one. 

 And why heap the abuse and disgrace all on the woman's head, with the 

 fact staring you in the face that the ruin of these women is the work of 

 depraved men, that male depravity induced the opening of the house, 

 and was its support after opened. But for so doing no indignant mob or 

 law leechers are on his trail ; he is pitied, petted, kissed and forgiven, 

 whilst his participant is kicked, cursed and driven into deeper ruin. 



^f we would have female virtue undefiled, we must hold the man as 

 strictly to virtuous life as the woman is held — determine the chief aggres- 

 sor, and award accordingly. The erring woman of to-day is an outcast; 

 the man that induced her to err is held blameless. Our code of virti; e 

 came from the Jews, theirs from the Arabs. The Arab woman is made 

 to feel degradation in all its worst horrors — nakedness her fare, brutal 

 flogging her training, the harem the extent of her acquaintance, with no 

 other protector than her abuser, and with the Jews the erring woman was 

 stoned, and whoremongers did it. Not one could be found exempt from 

 adultery to throw the first stone, and what better the American moral and 

 justice? An erring woman is turned out of church in disgrace, whilst he 

 who wooed her into guile is retained as minister of that same church, and 

 looked up to by the nation at large as the great protestant pope. And 

 what the moral, we need be at no loss — a man will not allow in another 

 what he has not the heart to do himself. 



Male purity of our day is a theory only talked of ; all see the need and 

 preafch it, hoping others may practice it. On that score we are a nation 

 of theorists. All admit that like begets its like — can see how the chip 

 came from the old block when a neighbor's child errs, but when a bad 

 streak crops out at home, then a pious ejaculation : " Wondrous are the 

 works of providence, and His ways past finding out — whom the Lord 

 oveth he chasteneth." Thus shouldering all their fools, dwarfs and vici- 

 ousness on their God, instead of owning up that they themselves and 



