UNCHASTITY 227 



scornfully ignored by her proud sisters. Everywhere 

 she finds it a generally recognized fact that "dress 

 makes the lady." On the street, no one steps aside 

 to let her pass, no one stoops to regain for her the 

 package that slips from her weary hands. Does she 

 enter a crowded car ! No one offers her a seat, though 

 she is trembling with fatigue, while the showily dressed 

 woman who follows her is accommodated at once. She 

 marks the difference; she does not pause to count the 

 cost, but barters away her self-respect to gain the re- 

 spect, or deference, of strangers. 



How Young Women Fall.— It has been authori- 

 tatively stated that there are, in our large cities, hun- 

 dreds of young women who, being able to earn barely 

 enough to buy food and fuel and pay the rent of a 

 dismal attic, take the advice offered by their employ- 

 ers, ' ' Get some gentleman friend to dress you for your 

 company." Others spend all their small earnings to 

 keep themselves "respectably" dressed, and share the 

 board and lodgings of some young roue as heartless as 

 incontinent. Persons unaccustomed to city life, and 

 thousands of people in the very heart of our great 

 metropolis, have no conception of the frightful preva- 

 lence of this kind of prostitution. Young women go to 

 our large cities as pure as snow. They find no lucra- 

 tive employment. Daily contact with vice obtunds their 

 first abhorrence of it. Gradually it becomes familiar. 

 A fancied life of ease presents allurements to a hard- 

 worked sewing-girl. Fine clothes and comfortable 

 lodgings increase the temptation. She yields, and bar- 

 ters her body for a home without the trouble of a mar- 

 riage ceremony. 



Wealthy women could do more to cure the "social 

 evil ' ' by adopting plain attire than all the civil author- 



