The Princeton union., 1891-09-03

no one offers, and after a while the
Judge turns to some attorney who
never had a good case in all
his life, and never will, and
whose advocacy would be enough
to secure the condemnation of inno-
cence itself. And the professional in
competent crawls up beside the pris-
oner, helplessness to rescue despair,
when there ought to be struggle
among all the best men of the profess
sion as to who should have the honor
OF trying to help that unfortunate.
How much would such an attorney
have received as his fee for such an
advocacy? Nothing in dollars, but
much in every way in happy con-
sciousness that would make his own
life brighter, and his own dying pillow
sweeter, and his own heaven happier
the consciousness that he had saved
man! So there are commercial ext
gencies where the Christian spirit can
be shown In saving a man.
There sometimes come exigencies in
the life Of a woman. One morning a
Jew years ago saw in the newspaper
that there was a young womanin New
York whose pocketbook containing
S37.33 had been stolen, and she had
been left without a penny at the be-
ginning OF winter, in a strange city,
and no work. And although she was
a stranger, 1 did not allow the 9
O'Clock mail to leave the lamp post on
our corner without carrying the $37.-
50; and the case was proved genuine.
Now | have read all Shakespeare's
tragedies, and all Victor Hugo's trag-
edies, and all Alexander Smiths trag-
edles, but never read tragedy more
thrilling than that case, and similar
cases by the hundreds and thousands
In all our large cities; young women
without money and without home
and without work in the great mael-
stroms OF metropolitan life.
New York and Brooklyn ground up
last year about 10000 young women,
and would like to grind up about as
many this year. Out OF that long
procession OF women who march on
without hope for this world or the
next, battered and bruised and
scoffed at, and flung off the precipice,
not one but might have been saved for
home and God and heaven. Butgood
men and good women are not in that
kind OF business. Alas for that poor
thing! nothing but the thread of that
sewing girls needle held her and that
thread broke.
l have heard men tell IN public dis
course what maris
But WHAT IS A WOMAN?
Until some one shall give a better
definition L will tell you what woman
is. Direct from God a sacred and del
lcate gift, with affections so great
that no measuring line short of that
OF thelntinite God can tell their bound.
Fashioned to refine and soothe and
lift and irradiate home and society
and the world. Of such value that no
one can appreciate it, unless his moth
er lived long enough to let him under
of life, when all else failed him,
had a wife to reinforce him
with a faith in God that nothing
could disturb. Speak out We
cradles, and tell of the feet that rock
ed you and the anxious faces that
hovered over you! Speak out, We
nurseries OF Christendom, and We
homes, whether desolate or in full
bloom with the faces of wife, mother,
and daughter, and help me to define
what woman is. But as geographers
tell us that the depths of the sea cor
respond with the heights of the noun
talns, have to tell you that a good
womanhood isnot higher up than bad
womanhood is deep down. The
grander the palace the more awful the
condagration that destroys. The
grander the steamer Oregon, the more
terrible her going down just off the
coast. Now, I should not wonder if
you tremble a little with a sense of re-
sponsibility when I say that there is
hardly a, person in this house but
may have an opportunity to save a.
woman. 1t may in your case be done
by good advice, or by financial help,
or by trying to bring to bear some one
OF a Thousand Christian Influences.
THERE IS ANOTHER EXPLOIT
you can do, and that is to save a
child. A child does not seem to
amount to much. 1t is nearly year
old before it can walk at all. For the
first year and half it cannot speak, a.
word. For the first 10 years it would
starve if it had to earn its own food.
For the first Is years its opinion on
any subject is absolutely valueless.
And then there are so many of them.
My, what lots of children! Am not
right in putting that among the great
exploits? H.
But what are you going to do with
those children who are worse off than
if their father and mother had died
the day they were born? There are
tens OF thousands OF such. Their
parentage was against them. Their
name is against them. The structure
OF their skulls against them. Their
nerves and muscles contaminated bv
the inebrity Or dissoluteness of their
parents; they are practically at their
birth out on a plank in the middle of
the Atlantic ocean, in an equinoctial
gale, and told to make for shore.
What to do with them is the question
often asked. There is another aues-
tion quite as pertinent, and that is,
what are they going to do with us?
They will, ten Or eleven years from