Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Souness

does not lack in excellent laws (as they read, in the
Statute Book), for the suppression of prostitution. There are laws
against procuring; against trading in Oriental women for evil
purposes; against buying or selling a female, with or without her
consent, for prostitution; against a husband forcing or influencing a
wife to lead an evil life; against a husband even consenting to his
wife practicing prostitution; against keeping a house of ill-fame; and
against knowingly renting a house for a place of prostitution. But all
these laws, almost the world over, as well as in California, are weak
at one point, namely, that they provide for imprisonment _or_ fine,
whereas they should provide for imprisonment _and_ fine. This is not
because the penalty would then be heavier, of necessity, but in order
that the law may not be prostituted into license. The alternative of
a fine instead of imprisonment defeats the object the public-spirited
citizens have in demanding a law for the discouragement of vice, and
places before the police officials a temptation to corruption. A mild
sentence, which invar

in Baker alley, where, it
is said, were placed the young girls of tender years, generally about
fifteen years old, when first brought over the water, or when first
initiated into brothel slavery, having served their apprenticeship
as domestic slaves. We are informed that fully seven-tenths of the
domestic slave girls found in Chinese homes in America--and every
well-to-do Chinese family (except Christians) keeps at least one or
two slaves--end their lives in immorality. Some of them when they
become old enough are seized by their masters as concubines, others
are sent to the brothels. Reports of conditions at Hong Kong which we
have already quoted, speak of the special celebration of the entrance
of a virgin into prostitution, and the high prices paid by patrons for
this initiation, but leave it obscure as to the nationality of the men
who initiate girls into the life of a brothel slave. But Chinese in
San Francisco do not hesitate to make the charge that Chinamen recoil,
through moral sense or superstition, from deflowering a virgin, and
that this horrible privilege is purchased at a special price by the
white, not the yellow patrons of Chinese houses of ill-fame. Baker
alley has probably been the scene of more terrible brutality of this
sort than any other part of San Francisco. Before the rubbish was
cleared away, in the oasis of a broad desert of ashes in the burned
city, we visited this region, and found carpenters busy at the work
of reconstructing brothels. The slave pen was existent again, and we
entered the gateway leading to it and gazed upon the rapidly growing
structures within. Two white men of a class called "Watch-dogs," in
the days before the fire, occupied a sort of look-out and kept guard,
more especially upon the entrance to Baker alley. This region,
so largely of American manufacture, like other sections of San
Francisco's Chinatown, was displayed, by means of Chinatown guides for
pay to tourists, who were led 

were
    opium couches, with pipes and lamps ready for use. We give this
    description in full, as it applies, almost without variation, to
    all the others which we visited in the immediate neighborhood.
    Food was furnished on order, intoxicating drinks, and opium. At
    the second place, on the opposite corner of the same block, the
    men told us that the place was used for the same purposes. We
    asked where the women were, and they answered that it was too late
    to see them, but if we would come earlier we would find them. When
    asked where the women came from, they pointed down to the street
    below, to the open brothels, and said there were a great number of
    degraded women who lived close by; said the brothel-keepers sent
    them. They said that white men as well as Chinese came to their
    place. After this we walked the length of the several streets and
    side-streets, in the near vicinity, and proved the truth of what
    the men had told us as to the swarming numbers of degraded girls
    and women.
    "The next night we went to the same neighborhood, and revisited
    the two places already mentioned, and others also. As we reached
    the top of the stairway and passed into the front room of the
    place where they had invited us to return, there was quite a
    flutter of excitement, and we instantly saw that there was
    a number of girls present, all very young, and several mere
    children. On our left a fat, middle-aged Chinese man sat, with two
    or three little girls, one in his lap and one on either side of
    him, in his arms; two more were throwing something that resembled
    dice on a table within the front alcove, and the rest were sitting
    on the opium couches. There were ten girls in all; the t

of David, or of Moses, as for instance that "God will
circumcise the heart," enables us to judge of their spirit. If all their
other expressions were ambiguous and left us in doubt whether they were
philosophers or Christians, one saying of this kind would in fact determine
all the rest, as one sentence of Epictetus decides the meaning of all the
rest to be the opposite. So far ambiguity exists, but not afterwards.
691. If one of two persons, who are telling silly stories, uses language
with a double meaning, understood in his own circle, while the other uses it
with only one meaning, any one not in the secret, who hears them both talk
in this manner, will pass upon them the same judgment. But, if, afterwards,
in the rest of their conversation one says angelic things, and the other
always dull commonplaces, he will judge that the one spoke in mysteries, and
not the other; the one having sufficiently shown that he is incapable of
such foolishness and capable of being mysterious; and the other that he is
incapable of mystery and capable of foolishness.
The Old Testament is a cipher.
692. There are some that see clearly that man has no other enemy than lust,
which turns him from God, and not God; and 

atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion abhors
almost equally.
Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it should needs be
either that it would be destroyed or be a hell.
If the world existed to instruct man of God, His divinity would shine
through every part in it in an indisputable manner; but as it exists only by
Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ, and to teach men both their corruption
and their redemption, all displays the proofs of these two truths.
All appearance indicates neither a total exclusion nor a manifest presence
of divinity, but the presence of a God who hides himself. Everything bears
this character.
.. Shall he alone who knows his nature know it only to be miserable? Shall
he alone who knows it be alone unhappy?
.. He must not see nothing at all, nor must he see sufficient for him to
believe he possesses it; but he must see enough to know that he has lost it.
For to know of his loss, he must see and not see; and that is exactly the
state in which he naturally is.
.. Whatever