Long, Mason - Save The Girls - 1880

Preface

We hear of reformed men on all sides ; there are reformed criminals of every kind in the pulpits, on the rostrums, in the church, telling the story of their past lives, that all who hear may heed the terrible warning and profit by the example; but we hear little or nothing of "reformed women." Efforts are constantly being made to elevate and save degraded men, but degraded women are left by the wayside to perish. The author has long pondered over this subject, and wondered why a lost woman isn't just as well worth saving as a lost man, and why she can not be as easily reached as he. In this little volume, I have endeavored, in my humble way, to plead the cause of these wretched outcasts, and present their claims for consideration. Fully aware that the subject I have discussed is a most delicate one, I have endeavored to handle it in such a manner that no right minded person can take any offense. The book might better have been written by some abler pen than mine, but one thing I beg to say : that no word in

PBEFACE it has been penned with any motive save that of doing good. If my humble efforts direct the attention of all good people to our erring sisters, and lead them to hold up the hands of their clergymen in efforts to save these wretched beings, I shall feel my book has accomplished its object — that my labor has not been in vain.

MASON LONG.

Fort Wayne, Ind., August, 1880.

chapter I. A PAGE FROM REAL LIFE — INTRODUCTORY

In one of the large cities of this country, a few years ago, resided a man whose life seemed to have been crowned with all the blessings which this world could bestow. In the prime of a vigorous manhood, in the possession of perfect health, the owner of a vast property from which he derived a princely income, the occupant of an elegant and beautiful home, filled with all the attractions that money could purchase or the most luxurious taste could suggest, he was envied by all as one of the most happy and fortunate of men. His family consisted of a lovely wife, several years his junior, of a son just verging upon

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man's estate, and of a daughter just budding into maidenhood. Upon this family the husband and father lavished all the affection of his nature. His wife, who was queen of her husband's heart, was also a petted queen of society. She desired nothing that money would furnish which was not given her. She dispensed to her friends an elegant hospitality which few could rival. Her entertainments were of the most elaborate description. She enjoyed all the advantages and pleasures of travel, dressed in the most fashionable style, had her splendid carriage and her box at the opera; in a word, she lacked for nothing that wealth could procure or the world could give, that would contribute to her happiness.

Upon the son and daughter both parents showered their love. The mother — as mothers always do — fairly doted upon her son, while the father worshiped his daughter, and in his mind often pictured for her a brilliant future. It is hardly necessary to say that this sou and this daughter, upon whom so much love was bestowed, and about whom so many fond

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hopes clustered, were petted and humored to an excessive degree. The young man bore his father's full name, and was reared with a view to becoming the paternal successor as the manager of the latter's extensive business. His early youth gave promise of a brilliant career in the future. Inheriting his father's splendid physique and perfect health, he was really a model of manly beauty. Possessed of a fine intellect, and naturally inclined to be industrious and studious, there was every thing about him to justify the pride and confidence which his parents felt in him. When he left home to enter college, his record was pure and unsullied ; but the temptations of college life proved too strong for him to withstand, and he readily succumbed to them. The social glass, which had always been tendered to guests at his home, possessed a charm for him which grew with each succeeding day. The gambling table was as attractive and dazzling to him as it had proved to thousands who had gone before. The seductions of the strange woman made him a not unwilling victim ; and in a few

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short years, the young man who had been the subject of so much pride and hope and affection was morally, physically and mentally broken down, when he should have been just entering upon the prime of life.

Who can paint the deep grief with which the fond father, with the burden of advancing years just beginning to weigh upon him, saw his only son, the boy upon whom he had expected to lean in his old age, becoming a gambler, a drunkard and a roue? Who can picture the heart-breaking agony of the mother, as she saw her first born selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, passing his hours in unholy pleasures, drinking the forbidden potions of vice to the very dregs, wrecking himself, morally, mentally and physically, preparing for a premature death and a dishonored grave? Alas, the anguish of that father, the tears and sobs of that mother, over their wayward boy ! How they strove to reclaim him to a life of dignity and usefulness ! How they sought to cover from the gaze of the world his vices and his weaknesses ! How they tried to wean him

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from the degrading passions to which he seemed to have surrendered himself, body and soul! How they welcomed him home with words of forgiveness and pity after a drunken debauch, and pleaded with him to forsake his evil ways for the paths of honor and virtue ! How they hoped against hope that he would finish " sowing his wild oats" ere it became too late, and live to be an honor to himself and a credit to his family !

Finally, the young man showed signs of remorse. He gave indications of an awakened conscience. Broken in health, downcast in spirit, crippled in fortune, sated with the degrading pleasures of the world in which he had wasted the best years of his life, he returned to his father's home, and settled down to a demure and quiet existence. His mother's arms were opened to receive him, his father's benefactions were showered upon him. The prodigal son, tired of eating the husks of sin, had returned home. He had squeezed the lemon of vice, and thrown away the skin. He had exhausted the

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attractions of dissipation. In a word, he was a jaded profligate; a broken down roue ; having burned the candle at both ends he was prematurely old. But this young man, tainted in body, seared in soul, weakened in intellect by the excesses through which he had passed, was welcomed back to the elegant mansion; was given the seat of honor at the family table, was clothed in fine raiment and feasted upon the fatted calf. All of his shortcomings were not only forgiven but forgotten. In a few years he led a pure and beautiful young woman to the marriage altar ; and to-day he occupies the position of a trusted and honored citizen.

But there was deeper trouble yet in store for those parents.

The daughter, during the years which her brother had passed in sensual dissipation and beastly indulgence, had reached womanhood. Beautiful in face, faultless in figure, charming in manners, graceful in movement, possessing an affectionate disposition, an ardent, susceptible temperament and a natural love for gayety

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and dress, trained in all the polite accomplishments, it is not surprising that she became, in her first "season" a reigning "belle," the recognized idol of society. With her disposition and temperament she was naturally in love with the world, and completely fascinated with the allurements of the thoughtless circles in which she moved. Her life was one continued round of pleasure. Balls, parties, operas, theaters, receptions, routs, followed each other in quick succession. In the parlors of the wealthy and aristocratic, this ardent, susceptible maiden mingled with men of property and high position, whose morals were as low as their social pretensions were lofty. Moving in this unnatural and heated atmosphere, breathing an air polluted by well dressed libertines and aristocratic rakes, her head turned by the flattery and adulation which were poured out upon her, what more natural than that this fair young woman should err, and fall a victim to the lecherous wiles of one of those selfish, heartless scoundrels whom society welcomes to its drawing-rooms, and

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feasts in its banquet halls ? The petted daughter of fashion, like so many of her sisters, was led, in an unguarded moment, into the meshes of the tempter. From that hour her fate was sealed. A blight was cast upon her life and happiness, as deadly and fatal as that of the pitiless plague upon its helpless victim. Her sin was with her day and night. A deadly pallor succeeded the lovely tint of her rare complexion ; her heavy eyelids and dull, leaden eyes, told too plainly of long, sleepless nights, and troubled dreams. Unable to conceal her shame, she left, in the dead hour of night, the home of her youth, with all its comforts and luxuries, and went out into the world, a miserable, ruined girl.

The parents read the few lines their daughter had.penned before leaving their roof, with feelings of the most abject despair. That ' the fair girl whom father had worshiped and mother had cherished with so much tenderness and affection; whose life had been a pathway strewn with roses; whose every whim had

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been gratified and every caprice acceded to; that she should bring dishonor and shame upon herself and them, was a blow. so terrible, so sudden, so paralyzing, that the deep grief of the wronged ones could for a time find no expression in words or tears. Their mute, dumb* agony was of that intensity, that hopelessness, which can not be described in words. But they determined" to bear their disgrace and suffer their humiliation in proud silence. They trembled when they thought what society would say ; but society, at least, should never know how they suffered. They would never mention their daughter's name again, even in each other's presence. To them she should be as one who was dead ; as one whom they had consigned to the grave. And so the night of gloom and darkness settled down upon that once happy home, where before all had been light, and mirth, and flowers, and music, and happiness. The spacious parlors were closed to the world ; the doors of the stately mansion no longer flew open to the butterflies of fashion and the devotees of pleasure; where before

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had been revelry and feasting were now solitude and darkness.

And the erring daughter, what of her? Where did she wander when she left, forever, the happy home of her childhood and youth ? Did she find helping hands and sympathetic hearts in her misery and despair ? Did father and mother and brother follow her footsteps, and endeavor to woo her back to the paths from which a single false step had taken her ? Alas, no ! She roamed away, in the blackness of night and the hopelessness of despair, going she knew not whither, tending she knew not where. Dark thoughts of suicide entered her mind, but fear of the great hereafter stayed her hand from the work of self-destruction. On, on, she went, anywhere to get away from the familiar scenes of her youth and childhood ; away from the imposing palaces where she had been so often a welcome and petted guest ; away from the long rows of stately store-houses where she had been wont to deck herself with costly jewelry and fine raiment ; away from sights and faces which could but

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remind her of the happy past; away to the great Metropolis in the distance where, at least, she could bury herself among strangers and conceal her shame from the companions of former years. To the distant city she went, and entered upon an unequal struggle with the world. The slight resources she possessed when she abandoned her home were soon exhausted. She had been taught many accomplishments, but they seemed of no avail as a means of gaining a livelihood. Her slender, white fingers were wholly unaccustomed to toil. To household duties she was a stranger; and though her proud spirit revolted at the idea of domestic service, she was ready for any thing but harlotry to avert the starvation which threatened. She could sew a little, and sing a little and dance a little. She might teach music or teach school, but alas ! she could get no pupils. She could obtain no patrons as a seamstress. Day after day she left the humble lodging to which she had been reduced— such a fearful contrast with her luxurious apartments of former days— and walked up and down the

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long streets of the great city, asking in vain for honest toil by which to gain a subsistence. Work was nowhere to be found ; but suggestions and proposals which brought the blush of shame to her cheek, and made the hot blood of indignation stir within her, were frequent responses to her applications for employment.

Hope at last died within the poor girl's heart. There seemed but three things before her : Death by suicide, actual starvation or a life of shame. Prom the last her soul revolted in horror, and she determined upon suicide as the alternative. But, as before, her courage failed her. She dared not plunge into the awful gulf of eternity, without a single hope for salvation. Her thoughts turned again, as they had done so frequently before, to the home she had lost ; to the indulgent mother and the doting father whose hearts had always been so responsive to her every appeal. She had often tried to write to them, but as often her pen had dropped unused by her side, and the white paper was untouched, save by the

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tears which fell from her eyes. But now it was suicide, starvation or open shame. Would an appeal for help from an erring, suffering daughter be refused? Would father and mother not relent somewhat toward her whom they had once so idolized? After a desperate struggle she mastered her pride and sent to her parents a letter begging their forgiveness, and asking, not for the privilege of returning home, for that she did not then desire ; not for recognition as their daughter ; that she dared not hope for ; but for the means of keeping body and soul together. Weary days she waited for an answer, but none came. No word of forgiveness, no message of sympathy, no means of help came from those parents, who had worked for years to save their reckless son, and who had welcomed him, fresh from a life of debauchery, and reeking with the pollution of his shameless orgies, to a seat of honor at the family board. But the daughter, who had made a single false step, was to them as one dead ; and her letter lay unread and unopened. Against her the doors of her

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former happy home were closed, and from her the hearts of her parents were turned in anger.

The broken-hearted girl, losing the newborn hope which had sustained her for the past few days, was again reduced to utter despair. While in this frame of mind her eye fell upon an advertisement in a newspaper for " fifty handsomely formed ladies to dance in the ballet at 's Theater." She was one of

several hundred to respond to this advertisement at the manager's office of the theater. She appeared before the scrutinizing gaze of the stage manager, who passed some coarse compliments upon her still beautiful face and her fine figure. She was accepted ; and after a few days severe training was duly installed as a member of the ballet in the gorgeous spectacle at i — 's Theater. Her wages were trifling, but were at least sufficient to maintain life, and in the meantime the unfortunate young woman sought for other and more congenial employment. The atmosphere of the theater was distasteful to her; it was repugnant to her innate delicacy and refinement;

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but no other avenue of employment was open to her. In a few weeks she lost even this wretched means of subsistence. The spectacle was withdrawn and she was left again utterly without resources.

In the ballet her face and figure had attracted the attention of the manager of a variety theater. He sought her out and offered her an engagement at his establishment. At first she declined; but grim want was again across her pathway, and as a last resort she was compelled to accept. In the variety theater she first appeared in the ballet, and finally as a "star" dancer and ballad singer. To please her audiences, and keep her position, she had to gradually relinquish her delicacy, and abandon her modesty. She was forced to sing indelicate songs, and dance in indecent costumes. She repeatedly sought to get other and more reputable employment, but as often failed. She became a favorite with the male audiences who crowded the theater night after night. Her picture was prominent on the bills and was placarded in the barrooms and saloons. But as she advanced in her "profession" so called, she loathed and despised herself. She at last began losing her self-respect. She was surrounded by the vile and depraved of both sexes, and moved in an atmosphere of vice and profligacy. She sought in every possible way to drive from her mind the torturing recollections of the past, and to keep from her vision the anticipations of the terrible future, to which she felt herself surely and rapidly drifting.

Prom this point her descent was rapid. She tried in vain to escape from herself in drink, and to bury her troubles in the oblivion produced by liquor. Finally she cast off all restraint and became desperate and reckless. What was there to hope for or strive for? Was she not hated and despised by that world in which she had formerly moved? Had not her father and mother cast her off, and did they not regard her as dead to them ? Was not the home of her childhood closed against her? What was before her but shame and death? She abandoned herself to her fate.

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In the " green-room " of the theater in which she danced and sung, there were none more gay and reckless than she. Wine was her only solace. She proceeded rapidly on her downward path. She had been supplanted in the favor of the patrons of the theater by a new " star," and was no longer profitable to the manager, who therefore refused her further employment. Her habits were such that she could get no engagement elsewhere, and she was soon duly installed as the mistress of a notorious gambler. When he tired of her she became the inmate of a gilded palace of sin. Another step downward and she was the vile outcast of the streets, shunned and despised even by other fallen women who had not reached so low a depth. The last act of the tragedy soon followed.

The story was told in the daily papers as one of such frequent occurrence as to be unworthy of extended comment. It was prefaced with the stereotyped headline "One More Unfortunate," and it told how the body of a young woman had been found in the lake ;

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how the face was still beautiful, despite the marks of dissipation it bore ; how the coroner's jury rendered a verdict of death by suicide, and how the body was buried in the Potter's Field without a single mourner to shed a tear> a solitary loved one to cross the hands, or smooth with affectionate touch the raven hair, or the slightest indication that one person in all the wide world cared for the poor, erring, heart-broken woman who had sought refuge from a life of degradation and misery in the cold, gloomy waters of the lake.

This is no fancy sketch. It is true, even to the minutest details. The family referred to will be recognized by many who read these pages. The history of the poor girl was related in full in one of our leading journals. Whether the parents of the suicide knew of her fate, I can not tell, but I do know that a few months after her dead body was found floating in the lake, the remains of her father were followed to the cemetery by a long procession of mourners, affording a striking contrast to her solitary burial.

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At twenty, a young, beautiful, happy girl, the pride of a luxurious home, the pet of society ; at twenty-four, an outcast suicide in a great city, even her name obliterated, and her star set in a night of blackest darkness !

There are thousands upon thousands of such cases constantly occurring all over the land. The columns of our great daily papers teem with the sad stories of such wrecked lives and broken hearts. The police records of our large cities are full of such sad romances.

Who is to blame for such grim tragedies? Can the civilization of the 19th century, can the Christianity which is sending missionaries to bear the Gospel to the uttermost corners of the earth, can the charity which is trying in so many ways to raise and elevate lost humanity, do nothing to prevent such mournful sacrifices ? Can society not stay the slaughter of innocent and lovely virgins at the hands of brutal lust? Can the pulpit do nothing? Nor the press ?

I maintain that much can be done by all of these agencies in this direction, and the object

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of this unpretentious little volume is to do something toward awakening public sentiment on this all-important matter. I am aware that the subject is a delicate one, and one to be handled with care, lest what I say may have the opposite effect from what is intended. But it can not, must not be ignored. If plain speaking be necessary, then plain speaking we must have. I wish to say nothing which can be regarded as offensive, or construed as indelicate. My main object is to point out the numerous temptations which society throws around young women, and to which so many of them succumb. I want to show the fatal allurements of the dance, the theater, and many other popular social amusements. I want to show how society pets and humors and caresses the vilest of men, and bestows honors upon wealthy libertines, educated roues and aristocratic rakes. Can one touch pitch without being defiled ? Can innocent maidens come in constant contact with those depraved men whom we by courtesy style "men of the world," without - being smirched and polluted ? Society wel-

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comes to its privileges and pleasures the jaded debauchee, the worn-out profligate, and when he leads to the altar a fair and lovely young maiden, who is the very personification of purity and virtue, society smiles with approbation.

In the case above related, the son was for years addicted to ill kinds of dissipation and debauchery. He reveled in the vilest excesses, and plunged into the most disgraceful orgies, but his father's house was always open to him, his mother's arms were ever ready to receive him. Society welcomed him to its ranks, and when, jaded with his life of profligacy and debauchery, he sought in marriage a pure and spotless maiden, there was none to say him nay. But the daughter, for a single false step, that naturally resulted from the surroundings which society had thrown about her, was disowned and sent out into the world an outcast. No effort was made to redeem her, no attempt to save her. She became to her parents as one who was dead ; and even her appeals for the necessaries of life were unopened and unheeded.

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Struggling for months to save herself from ruin, she was at last literally forced into the paths of open shame and driven to a suicide's death. Society has her blood upon its hands, and the loss of her soul is charged to society's account.

It is a painful truth that a fallen woman has scarcely any chance whatever of reformation. Thousands of prostitutes would to-day abandon their lives of wretchedness and misery if there were any other avenue open «o tnem. But every door is closed in their faces. They are shunned and avoided on every hand. They can get no reputable employment if it be once known that they have sinned. Their own sex is the most relentless and unforgiving in its persecution of them. An erring daughter finds, as a rule, her father more ready to forgive than her mother; her brothers more willing than her sisters. Why this is so I do not know, but that it is so I do know, and this, I presume, no one will gainsay for a moment.

How different it is with a man. It matters not how low, how vile, how degraded he may

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become, there is always encouragement for him to reform. The female sex especially is anxious to elevate him, while it would relentlessly turn its back upon any poor, wretched, sinning woman, who might desire to abandon her loathsome life and enter upon a new existence.

In this little book I shall relate many facts and incidents which have come under my personal observation, and which, I trust, will open the eyes of my readers to the necessity of trying to save " fallen women" as well as "fallen men."

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Chapter II The Principal Causes Op The Social Evil

Fallen women owe their ruin to a variety of causes. A large number of them have a natural tendency to vice, which is born in them, being inherited from their ancestors. Such are, in thought and feeling, prostitutes from youth, and, at. the first opportunity, be- - come profligate, either openly or covertly. Many of them remain chaste in body, owing simply to a lack of opportunity to indulge their natural propensities, but their minds are without purity, their passions and sentiments are coarse, and the sexual sin they crave is just as much theirs as though actually committed in deed, as it is in thought. These women, who are naturally * impure, become prostitutes from choice. When they are not openly profligate they are often secretly so.

Before marriage they frequently cross the line of purity, after marriage they are unfaithful wives and heartless mothers. They impart to society a low, coarse tone ; they lead in setting the fashions and in fastening upon society the amusements, excesses and dissipations which in turn cause so many weak women to go astray; they become the heroines of sensational divorce trials and racy scandals, the details of which fill column after column of our daily papers, and pollute and contaminate the current literature of the day. These women rear children who inherit their natural propensities, and who, in turn, develop and disseminate the evil which is born in them. The class of women whose natural tendencies are lewd, whether they embrace open prostitution or indulge in secret liaisons, or even if, from lack of opportunity, they do neither (and are morally no better than if they did), are, of course, the most difficult to reclaim. Those who are essentially and inherently bad, while they can not, of course, be pronounced beyond redemption, are certainly very unpromising

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subjects, because therfe is nothing in them to appeal to, no aspirations for better things to cultivate, no leaning towards purity to encourage.

But, happily, a majority of impure women are not of this class. A vast majority of them love virtue better than vice, purity better than lewdness. They have been led astray from various causes, and having taken the one false step which, according to our code of social ethics, makes a woman forever an outcast, find themselves forced into the paths of sin, which they tread until they fill prematura, and dishonored graves. Many there are whose ruin can be ascribed to an ardent, susceptible nature, which has been worked upon by de- * signing villains whom society gives free license to prey upon the lambs within its ranks. These poor creatures have been deceived and, in a moment of weakness, have been led astray and fallen never to rise again. Their betrayers, having accomplished the evil they intended, turn their backs upon their victims; society closes its doors to them ; the churches practically ignore them, and there is nothing left to them but shame, and misery, and death. The unfortunates of this class — those who have been betrayed, rained and abandoned, who have sinned with another under a solemn promise of marriage, made only to be broken, who have "loved, not wisely, but too well " — are deserving of all the sympathy which can be bestowed upon them. They are not naturally bad; on the contrary, they have the qualities which go to make pure, loving wives and affectionate and devoted mothers ; weaker, perhaps, than some of their more fortunate sisters; more sorely tempted, possibly, than others; exposed, mayhap, at a tender age, when, without knowledge of the world, they were unable to appreciate the dreadful consequences of the step they took ; too trustful and confiding, doubtless, in men who came to them with society's endorsement; lacking, perchance, the watchful, anxious care of a true mother; thrown ofttimes amid surroundings which contributed to their fall ; surely these unhappy creatures a&e worth saving, and no