THE FRESH BLOOD or GIRLHOOD.
It is simply wonderful how easily such men—shrewd old fellows that could bargain with Shylock on the Rialto—can be hood-winked and hoodooed by a slip of a girl. But I could tell you of scores of cases where toothless old men have been led a terrible dance by just such a girl as that Jessie C., who this moment flitted by us.”
“What is the end of all these goings on?”
“What is the end of it? The end of it is often very close to the beginning. A few weeks shows our old Romeo that Juliet may be young, but she is not innocent. In some cases they make an endeavor to stick to their victim, but as a general thing they soon get everything out of the old fool, and then laugh at and discard him.”
“But I mean what becomes of the girls?”
“Well, sir, wonderful to say, in a great many instances they don’t go from bad to worse, but sometimes improve. I know some of them who have got married. I can’t say that any of them are happily married. In most cases the husbands must have known all about the “amusements” which occupied his wife’s attention in girlhood, and are as lacking in decency as she ever was. Probably he was not only aware of it but shared in the “gifts” extracted from “his old nobs,” as they affectionately name their victims. But wonderful as it may seem, some of these unions are blessed with considerable happiness.”
“You say that many of them amend their ways. What about the others?”
“The others are to be found in the fast houses of Toronto, Hamilton, Detroit, and Buffalo.”
“Well, don’t you think that even that is a very dreadful state of affairs? The way you speak one would think that it was a subject of congratulation that