LIE BY PREFERENCE.
If the truth were equally profitable, they would lie by choice. I have often heard them relate the stories of their lives to officers of charities or prisons, and in almost all cases the statements were wildly improbable. One of them spoke of being of good family and having been educated in a convent, when it was discovered that she could neither read nor write. The story of their downfall, as told by themselves, is always attributed to being the result of loving not wisely, but too well. In many cases I have heard this claim made, when the men in the force knew the whole history of the dame, and knew her representations to be absurdly false.”
“Well, you don’t mean to say that in your experience you haven’t met women who owed their downfall to the seductive wiles of men.”
“I am only speaking of these women in the aggregate, and giving you their general characteristics. I look upon them all as unfortunate, and some more so than others. Some deserve the description of unfortunates in the same degree as the burglars and thieves in the prisons do. Others undoubtedly are led into the life by a cruel fate. Indeed I know of such a case. Five years ago there lived near me a family, consisting of a husband and wife, and a son and daughter. The husband was a useless old moke, who didn’t even have energy enough to get drunk, but his wife had, and did. The boy, who was the eldest of the two children, was a rough, and got into a fight aboard an excursion boat, and came near killing a man. He fled to the States, and as far as I know has never been heard of in this city since. Mary was the only one of the family for whom the neighbors had any respect. She was a shy girl and seemed to