. A woman's
strongest and weakest point is her power of idealizing every cold fact
with which she comes in contact. She loves a handsome roue. He tells
her that if she will but take him in training she can make a new man
of him; that her fair hand can wipe all the dark spots from his past
life, smooth the rough places and elevate the depressions in his
character until it will be once more goodly to contemplate. And over
the stereopticon view of the man his fiancee throws the rosecolored
light of her idealistic lantern, and believes all he says. Of course
during their engagement he frequently slips back into the old path,
sometimes has a downfall that shocks and horrifies her who would
reform him, but, once more trimming and turning up the wick, she
bathes him in the pink light and remembers that he is not yet as
entirely under her influence as he will be some day. She would think
it cruel injustice were some unprejudiced observer to suggest that if
he cannot change his life when the possibilities of winning her are at
stake, he will hardly do so when the prize is his own.

It is doubtful if a man whose whole nature has become stunted, warped
and foul by sin, has in him the ability to love a true woman as she
deserves to be loved. I do not mean to intimate that his devotion to
her is feigned, but it is only such attachment as he is capable of,
and is no more to be compared with the unselfish love that she freely
lavishes upon him, than the mud-begrimed slush which settles in city
gutters to the snowy blanket covering country fields.

Beauty and the Beast may be a pretty fairy-tale, but in the realism of
practical life it assumes the guise of a tragedy that makes the
looker-on shudder with disgustful pity. My heart aches when I think of
the women who began the work of reformation with hope and laid it
down with despair at the end of a life that made them "turn weary arms
to death" with a sigh of welcome. On the table before me stands the
portrait of one such woman. When she was a merry-hearted girl, she
fell in love with a handsome, brilliant young fellow, whose only
failing was a dangerous fondness for liquor. He loved her
deeply--better than anything else in the world--except drink.
Nevertheless, he promised to overcome even this passion for her sake.
During the month immediately preceding their marriage, he came twice
into her presence intoxicated. In vain did her family plead and
protest. Her only answer was:

"Ha