ized as
the "open season" for the hunting of hearts and the pursuit of romance.
The girl who is her own chaperone and protector allows herself a
latitude of unconventionally in the period of Summer outings, of
vacations and excursions, of moonshine and frolic, which she would not
think of permitting herself at another season. Romance is in the air,
and even the careful and well-reared girl finds herself under its spell.

What is the result? Thousands of half-baked romances ending in Gretna
Green marriages are the invariable harvest of this season of Summer
silliness; marriages which bring suffering and bitter repentance and a
tragic climax in the divorce courts--if they do not come to a worse
ending.

Wherever the prow of an excursion boat pushes its way through the
waters, wherever crowds of young people mingle in the pursuit of
pleasure, there are hatched the romances which spell heartbreak and
unhappiness. Every Summer furnishes thousands upon thousands of these
cases. They are "down in the books"--one entry in the books at the
Gretna Green, the runaway marriage headquarters, and the other in the
divorce courts.

But there is another and a darker side to this matter of Summer
silliness. Not long ago, in the Woman's World, Mrs. Ophelia L. Amigh,
superintendent of the Illinois State Training School for Girls, at
Geneva, Illinois, warned our readers that the runaway marriage is a
favorite trick of the White Slaver. Mrs. Amigh knows what she is talking
about when she says this. The White Slaver haunts the excursion boat,
makes love to the girl whose head is turned with silly notions about
romantic courtships and marriages; he takes her to a Justice of the
Peace or a "marrying parson" of the excursion resort type, and a
ceremony is performed. Then they go to the big city and she is sold into
a slavery worse than death! This sounds sensational, but it has happened
so many times that it is a tame and threadbare tale to those who know
the dark things of metropolitan life, the black and ugly secrets of the
Under World.

Mothers should wake up to the fact that of all times daughters most need
their strongest warnings and their most devoted care during the season
of Summer silliness, of vacations and excursions, of unconventional
meetings with young men under the easy familiarity of fun and frolic and
a general "good time." And to the girl who has no mother at hand thus to
warn her; take it from us that as your own chapero