476 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



character. Having become a young lady, she must 

 now, according to the custom of the world, begin to 

 enter society. Here she meets all sorts of influences, 

 some good and some bad. At least, this is true of 

 society in most civilized communities. The young lady 

 very soon discovers that if she is to take equal rank 

 with her associates, she must adopt their manners and 

 customs, to a large extent at least. 



Unfortunately, the social customs in this country 

 are strangely prepared for a powerful tendency in the 

 direction of evil. These influences soon begin to tell 

 upon the character of a young woman who has not been 

 fortified against them with intelligent care and correct 

 early training, and even these are not always proof 

 against the contaminating influences with which they 

 come in contact. Often enough has the writer met 

 cases in which young girls of only fifteen or sixteen 

 years have been permitted to enter the exciting whirl- 

 pool of social life, and imitating the example of their 

 elders, have accepted the attentions of young men of 

 whose history they knew nothing, and of whose char- 

 acters they were in no way competent to judge. 



Moonlight rides, long evening walks, associations at 

 parties, picnics, etc., give sly privileges, at first appar- 

 ently accidental, but gradually becoming more auda- 

 cious, until finally, within a few short weeks or months, 

 the cloak of modesty with which the young girl 's maid- 

 enhood had been protected was torn in tatters, and 

 she lacks but little, if anything, of having taken all 

 the steps necessary to lead a woman outside the pale 

 of virgin purity. Thousands of girls, thus early thrown 

 into society, without experience in the world, with im- 

 mature minds, warm-hearted and unsuspecting, are 

 annually led down the road to ruin through the oppor- 



