Trembling with indignation, my young friend quickly arose and unhesitatingly shouted:
"Police! Police!"
The procurer disappeared so suddenly that no one of the small crowd which quickly gathered knew what was the matter until too late to arrest the scoundrel.
Is that stranger the only procurer? Common sense answers, "No!" My reader, there are thousands. Therefore if nothing else, no other reason —and they are many—should cause young ladies to refrain from a practise which means compromise or ruin, often eternal damnation, surely this illustration should be sufficient.
Permit me to mention another reason, one I am also able to verify, for it came from one shipwrecked at the age of twenty-two, and now passed into eternity, but then lying in one of the wards of the county hospital. To be brief, he was a dancer. Honor, however, forbade his making any improper advances to his girl partners, but the effects of their close proximity were fatal. All the evil of his nature was stirred, and it would not be suppressed. He yielded; visited places whose thresholds he would never otherwise have crossed; then followed depravity, disease, and an untimely death. Who was responsible for this? The unharmed girls with whom he danced. Surely a word to the wise is sufficient. If dancing causes my brother to err, I will dance no longer.
CHAPTER XLIV.
SARAH.
Whilst doing a house-to-house work in one of our large coast towns, also filling various pulpits whenever opportunity permitted, I was on one occasion cordially invited to enter the lodging of a girl, who, when I was seated, quickly turned the key in the lock, remarking as she did so: "You're just the kind of a person I have been hoping this long time to meet. Excuse me for locking you in, but I don't want to be disturbed while you are here, where I'm truly ashamed to have you find me. I want to tell you my situation and see if you can not immediately get me out of this awful predicament."
Calling attention to the fact that there was no odor of liquor, no signs of cigarettes about, and stating that in consequence she was unpopular with the habitues of the other lodgings in the immediate vicinity, she inquired:
"Do I look like a hardened sinner?"