Weekly Trinity journal. [volume] (Weaverville, Calif.) 1857-1972, 1864-04-09
Terrible Results of Licentiousness.

Professor Wines, in an article in the October
number of the american Presbyterian and Theo-
logical Rerier, on g The Sources of Crime"
gives the following
Mr. Gould relates the story of fallen woman
whom he encountered in one of our penitentiary
hospitals, which casts terrible light upon the
tendency of RIGHTEOUSNESS to produce crime
She had been q woman of exquisite beauty and
elegant culture. Her father, a wealthy merchant
of New York, failed in business, and gave up
everything to his creditors. She was reduced to
the necessity of learning the trade of dress-maker
to earn her daily bread. She became proficient
in the business, and ner taste and skill COM
manded liberal wages which enabled her to pro-
vide an ample wardrobe for herself She had
been intensely devoted to the glitter and gaiety
of fashionable life, and hope, which springs
eternal in the human breast whispered that
fortunate marriage might restore her to the
charmed circle whose delights she had once
tasted, and which she longed to re-enter. She
used every effort, by the charms of person, dress,
voice and manners to attract the notice and win
the affections of eligible young men.
At length she thought she had succeeded in
her object but the young man whose affections
she dreamed she had won proved to be a cold
hearted villain, who was in pursuit only ofamuse-
ment and qualification for the passing hour
One evening he invited her to ride Driving into
ment in the neighborhood of that city He Of
fered her a glass oil wine, which she drank
The liquor had been drugged. profound stu
por ensued, and she awoke the following morn
ing to find herself ruined. With returning con-
seriousness, the magnitude of the injury burst
upon her. She instantly resolved on revenge,
ard the plan for its accomplishment flashed upon
her mind with the suddenness and rapidity of
lightning She betrayed no emotion, she uttered
no reproaches She treated What had happened
as harmless lest and blandly invited contin-
ance of the intimacy.
The young man exulted in the case and COM
pleteness of the victory but from that moment
she became the evil genius of his life. Profess
ing the tendercst and most unselfsh affection, she
drew money from him continually, with which
she hired sharps to furnish him with provoca-
tious to drinking, gambling and all forms OF vice
and debauchery. AT every Tally OF iis better
nature bv skilful alienation of persuasion,
banter and menace; she choked the rising i'm
pulse of virtue, chained him to the car of dis
spation and confirmed him in his fatal career OF
vice.
Full well did she know whittier all this would
lead him. nor was she disappointed in her malig-
nant expectation. Drunkenness clouded his I'M
derstanding debauchery ruined his health, and
gaming reduced him to poverty. Not until this.
point, the goal of all her prayers and efforts
had been reached when poverty and disease haa'
done their work and he was unable TO procure a.
wretched bed scanty meal, except through
her charity, did she wreak upon him the full'
measure of her vengeance Then 1t was her
daily delight to visit him ; TO load him with re-
proaches, and to re, cal to him in bitter exulta-
ton the whole scheme so cunningly devised and
SO steadily pursued, by which she had wrought
| his ruin. And when the closing scene drew
near, she sat by his bedside and mingled her
eSecrations with shreks extorted by his dying
agOnies.
| W ,ros ber van aay,ce vet satisfied Her
warfare was against the whole Sex, whom she
regarded as accursed, and her lnsatiate revenge
cried out for still further victims. Whenever she
| could fasten her fangs on young man OF genteel
family, whose unclouded prospects foretokened
brilliant career, she never relaxed her hold
She studied with keenness sharpened by expe-
rience every point in his character-his tastes,
his passions, his hopes, his fears, whatever at
tracted and whatever repealed him and then,
with an almost unerring sagacity, adapting the
means to the end, she seldom failed in her de-
moniac end She claimed in this mode to have
hunted down thirty-two young men, involving
, them in disgrace, crime and ruin. Some OF them
ended their days in prison, and others, hopeessiy
fallen, were on the road to the .drunkards ana
felon grave.
When asked whether all her sisters in infamy
had the same hatred to mankind, she replied fnas
she thought the feeling to be general II not uni
yersal among them, adding, that when woman
, had once fallen she desired to revenge nerseii
not only on her seducer, but on all his sex ,na'
no game was followed with greater relish tnan
that involving all who came within her foiis IN
crime and its consequent punishment that the
most of them conld number at least two or three
victims whom they had ruined, and that many
of these victims went to the length of the actual
commission Of crime
uAnRAH. me darling" cried jamie OFlani-
gan tn his ioouacious sweetheart, who had given