done at so much per head, — a terrible state of things, but legitimately growing out of popular demand, arising from popular hypocrisy, which seems to hold that a bastard is not fit to live, and therefore should be hurried into, and out of, the world as soon as possible. And yet, not one half the murdered innocents are such; for if we can believe scores of family physicians, ten married women resort to it, where one poor deceived girl is forced to, wholly unconscious of the dreadful enormity of her offence. And yet even a bastard is the handiwork of the Eternal God! Why not, then, permit them to be born, even though the mothers pass shamefacedly through the world! Legislators, in God's name I implore you to establish Foundling Hospitals for these unfortunates. It will not be putting premium on crime, but it will prevent many a suicide, and save thousands of human beings who are now being ruthlessly butchered, that abortion-brokers may fatten in the land! Murder, sirs, I tell you that red-handed Murder is abroad in the land, and his victims are the Innocents. It is the fashionable crime, alike resorted to by women in and out of wedlock, — of all classes, from the public leman on the highway, to My Lady Gay, and the poor girl who has loved, not wisely, but too well. Oh, all good people, let us try to prevent this tide of crime from submerging our country, — you in your way, I in mine. We are all journeying to the Land beyond the Shadow. Let us do something worthy ere we go. Good people, listen!
the hidden mystery.
I. Woman holds the reins of the world, if she but knew how to drive the fractious steed. She falls victim to passion only because of her physical unhealth and feebleness of will. She can — any girl or woman can — defy the arts and blandishments of any man who would lure her on to ruin, by preserving her health by right living, and steadily culturing the faculty of will. And she can do this, and increase her own power and attractions, by thinking "I will be strong ! and I will conquer the impulse that bids me yield!"
II. Any girl or woman can, by will alone, drive back any morbid magnetism flowing from another, and can restrain and direct to cooler channels that which pertains to her own physical being;
