erms that specify various
degrees of malice and guilt in this matter; and although they do not
sound well or look well in print, they have a meaning which sensible
folks should not ignore.

A lapse from virtue is bad; the habit or vice, voluntarily entertained,
is infinitely worse. If the one argues weakness, even culpable, the
other betrays a studied contempt for God and the law, an utter
perversion of the moral sense that does not even esteem virtue in
itself; an appalling thralldom of the spirit to the flesh, an appetite
that is all ungodly, a gluttony that is bestial. Very often it supposes
a victim held fast in the clutches of unfeeling hoggishness, fascinated
or subjugated, made to serve, while serviceable; and then cast off
without a shred of respectability for another. It is an ordinary
occurrence for one of these victims to swallow a deadly potion on being
shown her folly and left to its consequences; and the human ogre rides
triumphantly home in his red automobile.

But the positions may be reversed; the victim may play the role of
seductress, and displaying charms that excite the passions, ensnare the
youth whose feet are not guided by the lamp of experience, wisdom and
religion. This is the human spider, soulless and shameless, using
splendid gifts of God to form a web with which to inveigle and entrap a
too willing prey. And the dead flies, who will count them!

The climax of infamy is reached when this sort of a thing is made, not
a pastime, but a business, when virtue is put on the market with its
fixed value attached and bartered for a price. There is no outrage on
human feeling greater than this. We are all born of woman; and the
sight of womanhood thus degraded and profaned would give us more of a
shock if it were less common. The curse of God is on such wretches as
ply this unnatural trade and live by infamy; not only on them, but on
those also who make such traffic possible and lucrative. Considering
all things, more guilty the latter than the former, perhaps. Active
co-operation in evil makes one a joint partner in guilt; to encourage
infamy is not only to sin, but also to share all the odium thereof;
while he who contributes to the perpetuation of an iniquity of this
nature is, in a sense, worse than the unfortunates themselves.

The civil law which seeks to eliminate the social evil of prostitution
by enactment and process, gives rise, by enactment and process, to
another evil almost as widesp