of his protest, that very night she sent for the state's
attorney and made a full confession, giving her age as eighteen in the
hope of making her testimony more valuable. From that time on they
stuck to the lie through the indictment, the trial and her conviction.
Apparently it had seemed to him only a well-arranged plot until he had
visited the penitentiary the day before, and had really seen her
piteous plight. Remorse had seized him at last, and he was ready to
make every restitution. She, however, had no notion of giving up--on
the contrary, as she realized more clearly what prison life meant, she
was daily more determined to spare him the experience. Her letters,
written in the unformed hand of a child--for her husband had himself
taught her to read and write--were filled with a riot of
self-abnegation, the martyr's joy as he feels the iron enter the
flesh. Thus had an illiterate, neglected girl through sheer devotion
to a worthless sort of young fellow inclined to drink, entered into
that noble company of martyrs.

When girls "go wrong" what happens? How has this tremendous force,
valuable and necessary for the foundation of the family, become
misdirected? When its manifestations follow the legitimate channels of
wedded life we call them praiseworthy; but there are other
manifestations quite outside the legal and moral channels which yet
compel our admiration.

A young woman of my acquaintance was married to a professional
criminal named Joe. Three months after the wedding he was arrested
and "sent up" for two years. Molly had always been accustomed to many
lovers, but she remained faithful to her absent husband for a year. At
the end of that time she obtained a divorce which the state law makes
easy for the wife of a convict, and married a man who was "rich and
respectable"--in fact, he owned the small manufacturing establishment
in which her mother did the scrubbing. He moved his bride to another
part of town six miles away, provided her with a "steam-heated flat,"
furniture upholstered in "cut velvet," and many other luxuries of
which Molly heretofore had only dreamed. One day as she was wheeling a
handsome baby carriage up and down the prosperous street, her brother,
who was "Joe's pal," came to tell her that Joe was "out," had come to
the old tenement and was "mighty sore" because "she had gone back on
him." Without a moment's hesitation Molly turned the baby carriage in
the direction of her old home and