The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1871-01-26
The StSPy ofOne Little Girl.

There are some reasons why refOrmatory
lAstitution for girls ismore imperati7ely need
ID than one for boys. When the latter fall
into vicious or idle habits, there is generally
hope Of their reformation without resort to
special means for efecting that purpose
With their strong bodies and with the diver
city ofthe experiences and influences which
they meet, it is not unusual for them to re-
gain their moral health, after period of ap-
parsntly hopeless depravity. With girls the
case Is unhappily far otherwise. In only one
ease in hundred does wrong beginning
sld in anything but depravity, that is IRENE
diable except by special agencies.
There is no spectacle more calculated to
touch the sympathies of mank.nd-no sight
ever which the most heartless of men might
weep with tears Of more sincerity-than that
presented by poor little orphan girl, who,
LEFT without the restraints of good home, or
the admonitions Of any near friend, begins to
tread that downward path that surely, surely
leads her feet first to the awful abodes of sin,
dssolation, intense physical suffering and alb.
solute riendlessness, and finally to DEATH
That there are such spsctacles and hundreds
OF them over which angels weep, if men do
not. does not admit of doubt. Within our
own knowledge is such case, and most la
mentabl9 one. A girl Of thirteen or fourteen,
left motherless and friendless year ago, when
there was certainly nothing indicating char
acter naturally vicious, has since become from
pure neglect and consequent evil associations,
a. We understand, a profigate. We suppose
1t will be hard for many who read these lines
at their ease, enjoying the blessings of home
and the peace that comes of life of virtue
and intelligence, to realize that this little girl
Is flesh and blood as they are,-that she is ca
pabe Of experiencing anguish, mental and
physically as acute as they can suffer or imag-
Inc; and that over her soul the great desola-
ton that comes Of isolation from all sympathy
and companionship descends in as black
cloud as it would over their own.
Would it not be well to make some proyis
ion for saving children from such abysses as
We are sure the above simple and truthful re-
sital will bring wildly before the minds eye of
all who have any sensitiveness to human suf-
deaing? Instead of taxation to give the State
the delusfve prosperity which arises from
crowded population, and immense aggrega
tons Of wealth, let there be taxation to pro.
duce that real prosperity that belongs to the
State whose individual people have the larg-
ct average of virtue, intelligence and happi
ness. 1t will be to little purpose that facto-
ries spring up along our water-courses, great
cities rise at all our seaports, capitalists build
their great mansions and sumptuous country
seats on the shores of our romantic lakes,
while the population of the State goes steadily
up to millions, II our youth are to remain one
half Of them without the benefit of schools,
and If girls left like the one we have described
are to be abandoned to short life of vice and
misery without an effort made to save them.