The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-12

took up last week the social evil as his text,
and, after protesting that the wronged woman
had become the bugbear not only of society
but of literature, proceeded TO give us very
effective sketch (after Hawthorne) of her
dead in q cart and draped with a shawl. Our
essayist spoke deeper truth than, perhaps,
be knew. In literature or art the one more
unfortunate is always when lugged in pic
turesque and effective-whether as the Mag
dalene with face repentant, if not reformed,
bending over skull, or plung ng out of lifes
mystery into death madly by night But in
real life the wronged woman is the problem
that faces the reformer at every corner, un-
clean and commonplace, and, by virtue of its
very commonness and unceanness, the one
problem yet unconquered. Hers is the sole
figure about which in real life you can throw
none OF the softening shadows or half lights
which belong to it in fiction. The wronged
woman, dead in a cart or drawn from the
river which had drunk her down at last to
easeful death, is something which wrings
our heart with pity; but Anonyma alive,
brazen, starving-what will you do with her
She has made for herself a place, though on
the very edge of the pit, and society (bY
which we here mean decent womanhoo1) re-
fuses, with perhaps reasonable instinct of
self-protection, to give her an inch of safe
standing ground. Wholesale reformatories,
we cannot but perceive, are of but
little practical value in her case. The very
excess of the animal or emotional nature
which caused her to fall renders it impossi-
BILE to reach her by any machinery of gene
ralizing system or rules. She will not be
made to see the error of her ways by the
clockwork routine of decent life or in struc-
ton in needlework. You cannot marshal
her nor her like by platoons into conversion.
Ten to one, when she leaves the Rosine Asy-
lun or the House of the Good Shepherd she
goes back with redoubled zest into her old
life. She is the leper at our gates Say
what we will, it is hardly safe or practical for
many families to receive her within their
homes, and by intimate fellowship to attempt
her cure. We cannot legislate for her; we
cannot ignore her. She is there night and
day, an inexorable, obstinate, death. dealing
fact. We cannot even drown and make her
the picturesque shadow of literature.
We find in our late English exchanges an
account of an experiment for the REDEEM ption
of fallen women now making at Brighton,
which seems to us to embody so many ele-
ments of success that we wish to call to it
the attention of our own reformers. The idea
originated with woman, the first essential of
success, by the way, in any scheme for the
help of woman. This lady (only known to
us by an initial-another good sign) appears
to have stamped her individuality upon every
detail of the plan. The house which she gov
SID6 10 uOO I6iOrluhtOry, DUU nome. "A
girl who leaves it to go back to evil ways is
not received into it again; other meaus are
taken to help her, but that privilege she is
held to have forfeited. Surely we cannot
learn too early, says Mrs ", ''that justice
is the backbone of mercy, and that the most
merciless thing you can do in the world is to
make sin easy to the sinner" Opposed to this
necessary sternness in her system we find the
keen tact and womaDly tenderness by which
CHI Aolol ,F.,1.
avoids clothing the inmates in uniform,
giving them instead we'll fitting and becoming g
dress One hint we find especially sugges-
tive in the story of a woman who had at
tempted suicide, and whom she wished put
in the way of earning decent livelihood.
81 want you first, said Mrs V. to her agent,
''to hire room with nice sunny aspect, and
get some hower-pots to put in the window,
Mind, the plants must be in full flower" An
other still more significant hint is to be found
In her remarks upon the benefit of vehement
religious excitement upon the women whom
she has in charge. They are, she tells us, Pc
| culiarly susceptible to any such appeals. "a
| single, earnest, and rather sensational ad-
dress to them on the Prodigal Son, or some
moving portion of Scripture, with some allu-
sion to their mothers and their early homes
is enough to throw them into an agony of
uncomfortable weeping. But what have
yOu SuiACu' IOu OAly IululSJ6Teu 10
the very want of self-control which has been
one of the great sources of all their misery
Satan knows well enough, that just as pot
| boiling over, for all the noise it
makes will end in putting out the fire, and
half emptying itself, so if he can get but a
young convert to boil over into much talk
loud professions, and preaching to others,
| before he can we'll stand himself; above all, if
he can get him to boil over in his own estima-
9th Il arfn
he will soon cool down and be left half empty
with the fire gone out" In conjunction with
this sound sagacity we hear of the childlike
practical faith which prompts her, when a
| butcher refused to sacrifice the rent of q
lighthouse, and so prevented the reclama-
ton of its inmates, to go down upon her
knees with him and pray to God to show him
his duty. The quiet, earnest prayer had its
effect; the butcher yielded.
The whole story appears to us full of mean
ing. A fallen woman, to be saved, must come
in contact, not with a system or rule, but
! with another woman. Not only Christ-like
charity must go out to meet her, but careful,
shrewd sagacity and knowledge of human
nature. And underneath all must be that
faith, downright and absolute, now, as in the
days of the first Magdalene, in power above
earthly effort. A faith which, in order to
accomplish Gods work, would appeal as con-
! idently and quietly that reason might be
! given to an obstinate butcher, as that the
Angel of Death might be stayed in its course.
rcrrT, roTrr nm, AVN rrrrr