Connecticut western news., 1910-09-22
THE PRODlGAL GIRL

Visit any of our cities and note its might life robbed of all it's glitter and tIrrseL Analyze carefully what you see and you will find happiness, despair and misery, stalking side by side, and the lessons taught will be many, varied, and pathetic.
 Note wonder outcast only poor un- fortunate girl, her life failure, the bitterness of despair gnawing her heart, an ever present spectre of once promls- ing past. rising to haunt her waking hours. There comes at times ringing in her ears, the sweet lullabies of tender years; voices of home; the gentle face of mother, bending in love above her pillow. .aa1 r
 In such an hour she feels once more ehe touch of mothers hand smoothing froul her brow the disheveled hair. A lear drop glistens upon the pillow, shed by mother as she looked down upon that baby face and pictured it's future. How bright mother would have it made. There is no star in all the bright galaxy pf heaven mother would have shine with more radiant lustre.
 Hark Upon her ear falls the, songs of the past The outcast is tender tonight. Watch her as she sits i'll wonder cafe. A spell is upon her. Little cares she tonight for click of dice or flash of card, ur tintinnambulation of clinking glass as boon companions drink, though it may be the very nectar of the gods
 Memory bells! Listen to their deep sonorous pealing! What spectres of bygone memories haunt the grim charnel house of a wasted, blighted past2 Could mother see the outcast to- night, two hearts would break. Dimmed is the radiance of her star. An eclipse has covered it with a pail of black despair. Out from amid those sombre clouds dawn pictures of girlhood's happy hours Memory with scorpion Lash to- night stings, and burns and sears her very soul.
 Who shall say what form temptation sookg What hand is fit to cast at her fhe first stone? Lives there soul so pure amid environment of earthly life, look ing upon misfortune like unto hers dare say that for such pardon existeth not?
 Oh, pitying Christ whose heart of tenderness Ter flowed with compassion for such as she, though did'st not con- demn, but from out the depths of thy com passion did'st say unto such: Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool"
 In that building yonder, you learn that ayonng girl, such as she you have seen, ended her life. "One more un- fortunate, of reason bereft. rashly importunate, gone to her death" That's aEl But it tells the story. Tells of a bright young girls wasted life. Tells of promising hopes shattered and life wrecked on the shoals.
 What though that life, ere it's close, had been one of dissipation. What thought upon her was the brand of scarlet, loving ties of home cast aside and chidings of dear one's unheeded? Mother loved her! Mothers heart went out to her with all the depths and greatness and fragrance of a love eternal; @ love that delves into the very bRsckness of a city's slums, if need be, that it may seek to save the lost, or brFHg suocor to sorrowing hearts in the hour of nights dark despair.
 Only another young life gone out in Iss morning, almost before it had reached the monday. Our cities, alas! are full of young girls who are taking the same eourse. You meet them on any night rOund of the city; they are reaping the Harvest they have sown. They SOW the wind They reap the whirlwind Some have found the grainsry of that harvest the hospital; others the station hOnse,, the jail, the penitentiary the industrial school; while others have gUus to untimely death.
 This is no fanciful, oyerdrawn picture. It is one true to life; but the, half has neyer yet been told. Ask any wide awake, live, newspaper man of the metropolitan press, whose assignments night after night, bring him in close tuuch with the police and detective de- pGEtments of our cities; men who use their eyes and whose duty it is to see md know what is happening day, after day, and any such will tell you, that it's true.
 Use your owh eyes and see for your self, then ask yourself if there is not need of stronger moral teachings on the part of parents of the young girls of our cities and towns. We hear long disser- tations on the prodigal son, but whole chapters of unwritten history apply ag51ht after night to the prOdigal girl