Men get rich in these “institutes,” take in an “assistant” for a few weeks, then sell out to the novus homo, and the thing goes on under the old name until the new man gains strength and confidence sufficient to carry it along under his own or his assumed title.
Female Harpies.
Under the name of “female physician,” “midwife,” etc., the most illicit and nefarious atrocities are daily practised by the numerous harpies who infest all our principal cities. The mythological harpies were represented as having the faces of women, heartless, with filthy bodies, and claws sharp and strong for fingers, which, once fastened upon human flesh, never relaxed till the last drop of life’s blood was wrung from their unfortunate victim.
Virgil thus expressively described them in the third book of the Æneid:—
“When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry
And clattering wings, the filthy harpies fly;
Monsters more fierce offending Heaven ne’er sent
From hell’s abyss for human punishment;
With virgin faces, but with —— obscene,
With claws for hands, and looks forever lean!”
I will describe but one of the modern harpies of Boston, appealing to the reader if our text above is too severe.
More than forty years ago, a young, fair, and promising girl came to this city from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From her maiden home, near Meredith Village, from under the humble roof of Christian parents, she wandered into the haunts of vice and the abodes of wretchedness and disease in the lower part of Boston.
Her maiden name was Elizabeth Leach. You will find her name in the City Directory (1871) “Madam Ester, midwife.”
We have not space to write out her whole history, nor inclination to spread before the refined reader the first years of the gay life of this attractive damsel, the seductive and sinful debaucheries of the fascinating, unprincipled woman, nor the more repulsive declination of the diseased and malevolent bawd!