"day charge," having been arrested for stealing a pot of
condensed milk. At length she stood before the magistrate, and the
evidence was given that she was seen to take the milk and hurry away.
She was arrested with the milk on her.

It was believed that she had taken milk from the same place at other
times. When asked what she had to say in extenuation, she held her child
up and said, "I did not take it for myself, I took it for this!" She did
not call it her child. The magistrate looked, shuddered, and sentenced
her to one day.

So once again I stood face to face with her, and face to face with a big
man who had been waiting for her, who insolently asked me what I wanted
with his wife. I turned from him to the woman, and asked if she would
leave him, for if so I would provide for her.

Mournfully she shook her head; leave him, no!--to the bitter end she
stood by him.

So they passed from my view, the educated brute and the despairing,
battered, faithful drudge of a woman, to migrate from lodging-house to
lodging-house, to suffer and to die!

If all the girls of England could see what I have seen, if they could
take, as I have taken, some measure of the keen anguish and sorrow that
comes from such a step, they would never try the dangerous experiment
of marrying a man in the hope of reforming him. Should, perchance, young
women read this story, let me tell them it is true in every particular,
but not the whole truth, for there are some things that cannot be told.

Again and again I have heard poor stricken women cry: "How can you! how
can you!" More than once my manhood has been roused, and I have struck a
blow in their defence.

If there is one piece of advice that, in the light of my experience,
I would like to burn into the very consciousness of young women, it is
this: if they have fastened their heart's love about a man, and find
that thorough respect does not go with that love, then, at whatever
cost, let them crush that love as they would crush a serpent's egg.

And the same holds good with men: I have known men in moments of passion
marry young women, trusting that a good home and an assured income would
restore them to decency and womanhood--but in vain! I saw a foul-looking
woman far from old sent again to prison, where she had been more than
a hundred times. She had also served two years in an inebriate
reformatory. Fifteen years ago, when I first met her, she was
a fair-looking young woman. Needles