is stage such a character as that
of Carry Brattle? It is not long since,--it is well within the memory
of the author,--that the very existence of such a condition of life,
as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and daughters,
and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that ignorance
was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer is beyond
question. Then arises that further question,--how far the condition
of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern to the sweet
young hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness of thought is a
matter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women, who are good, pity
the sufferings of the vicious, and do something perhaps to mitigate
and shorten them, without contamination from the vice? It will be
admitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject that
no fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault, often so
light in itself but so terrible in its consequences to the less
faulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls. All her own sex
is against her,--and all those of the other sex in whose veins runs
the blood which she is thought to have contaminated, and who, of
nature, would befriend her were her trouble any other than it is.

She is what she is, and remains in her abject, pitiless, unutterable
misery, because this sentence of the world has placed her beyond
the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said, no doubt,
that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection to female
virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from vice. But
this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception of those who
have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand. Instead of the
punishment there is seen a false glitter of gaudy life,--a glitter
which is damnably false,--and which, alas, has been more often
portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of young girls, than
have those horrors, which ought to deter, with the dark shadowings
which belong to them.

To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex, as
one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life is
happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice and
misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be handled
with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless, may
be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened. It may
also at last be felt that this misery is worthy