ents as this, which I cut from a
late New York "Evening Express:"--

"Last night Capt. Lowery, of the Twenty-seventh Precinct, made a
descent upon the dance-house in the basement of 96 Greenwich Street,
and arrested fifty-two men and eight women. The entire batch was
brought before Justice Flammer, at the Tombs Police Court, this
morning. Louise Maud, the proprietoress, was held in five hundred
dollars bail to answer at the Court of General Sessions. _The
fifty-two men were fined three dollars each, all but twelve paying
at once; and the eight women were fined ten dollars each, and sent
to the Island for one month._"

The italics are my own. When we reflect that this dance-house, whatever it
was, was unquestionably sustained for the gratification of men, rather than
of women; when we consider that every one of these fifty-two men came
there, in all probability, by his own free will, and to spend money, not to
earn it; and that probably a majority of the women were driven there by
necessity or betrayal, or force or despair,--it would seem that even an
equal punishment would have been cruel injustice to the women. But when we
observe how trifling a penalty was three dollars each to these men, whose
money was likely to go for riotous living in some form, and forty of whom
had the amount of the fine in their pockets; and how hopelessly large an
amount was ten dollars each to women who did not, probably, own even the
clothes they wore, and who were to be sent to prison for a month in
addition,--we see a kind of injustice which would stand a fair chance of
being righted, I suspect, if women came into power. Not that they would
punish their own sex less severely; probably they would not: but they would
put men more on a level as to the penalty.

It may be said that no such justice is to be expected from women; because
women in what is called "society" condemn women for mere imprudence, and
excuse men for guilt. But it must be remembered that in "society" guilt is
rarely a matter of open proof and conviction, in case of men: it is usually
a matter of surmise; and it is easy for either love or ambition to set the
surmise aside, and to assume that the worst reprobate is "only a little
wild." In fact, as Margaret Fuller pointed out years ago, how little
conception has a virtuous woman as to what a dissipated young man really
is! But let that same woman be a Portia, in the judgment-seat, or even