“LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND.”
These warnings have also been directed to the parents of our girls.
The girls and women that need warning today are those who are drifting to the Lake of Infamy, drifting, some unconsciously and others with knowledge, in a vague way of what is before them.
To this class we cry out until we are exhausted and our throats are bleeding with the effort:
“Leave all hope behind, you who enter here.”
At each avenue leading into the hellish centers of the city should stand a lost woman, peering into the eyes and hearts of each girl who is creeping silently and shamefully to the vice dens. In her hollow, rasping voice, the lost woman should be made to cry out:
“TURN BACK ERE IT IS TOO LATE! THIS IS THE CITY OF THE DAMNED! THIS IS THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSE OF HELL! THIS IS THE CHARNAL-HOUSE OF DEATH! THIS IS THE SPOT WHERE THE GRAVES ARE ALWAYS OPEN AND YAWNING! LIFE HAS NO HOPE HERE!”
If each girl could be told the paralyzing truth of the life of the prostitute as we have told it in this book, would she plunge headlong into the consuming fire? Would she leap into the ever-present abyss? Would she take the first drink? Would she give her lips to the poison of the inhuman wretch who plots her death? Would she give her pure, white body to the abominations of the Vice Trust?
No, no, no: not unless she were born of hell and deprived of reason and judgment.
It has been our object to show that not one dream of the girl who enters a house of prostitution is ever realized.
She has hoped for fine clothes, jewelry, food and money.
She has found nothing but shame, suffering, remorse and sorrow.