character to what might be told by a thousand others if they
were not powerless. For months she had been confined to the house, her
love of dress indulged to the furthest extent, her mind polluted and
initiated into the mysteries of refined licentiousness, her personal
appearance scrupulously regarded, and made to serve the object of which
she was a victim in the hands of the hostess, who made her the worse
than slave to a banker of great respectability in Wall street. This
good man and father was well down in the vale of years, had a mansion on
Fifth Avenue, and an interesting and much-beloved family. He was, in
addition, a prominent member of the commercial community; but his
example to those more ready to imitate the errors of men in high
positions, than to improve by the examples of the virtuous poor, was not
what it should be. Though a child of neglect, and schooled to
licentiousness under the very eye of a generous community, her natural
sensibility recoiled at the thought that she was a mere object of prey
to the passions of one she could not love.

"She resolved to remain in this condition no longer, and escaped to
Savannah with a young man whose acquaintance she had made at the house
in Mercer street. For a time they lived at a respectable hotel, as
husband and wife. But her antecedents got out, and they got notice to
leave. The same fate met them in Charleston, to which city they removed.
Her antecedents seemed to follow her wherever she went, like haunting
spirits seeking her betrayal. She was homeless; and without a home there
was nothing open to her but that vortex of licentiousness the world
seemed pointing her to. Back she went to the house in Mercer street--was
glad to get back; was at least free from the finger of scorn.
Henceforward she associated with various friends, who sought her because
of her transcendent charms. She had cultivated a natural intelligence,
and her manners were such as might have become one in better society.
But her heart's desire was to leave the house. I took her from it; and
for a time I was happy to find that the contaminating weeds of vice had
not overgrown the more sensitive buds of virtue.

"I provided a small tenement in Centre street, such as my means would
afford, and we started in the world, resolved to live respectably. But
what had maintained me respectably was now found inadequate to the
support of us both. Life in a house of sumptuous vice had rendered Anna
incapab