"That is civilized nature."
"I forgave him, and bade him repent, and ask God to forgive him, as I did."
"Lovetree, give me your hand, I give you my heart; I stand rebuked. I understand you now, that was Christian nature. Let us go."
Reader, walk with us. We threaded our way along the crowded side-walk, passing or meeting, between the Astor House and Canal street, not less than fifty girls; some of them not over twelve years old, many about fourteen or fifteen, some of them superbly beautiful, naturally or artificially, and all, such as the spirit, hovering over the poor shipwrecked mariner upon the stormy ocean, cries wildly to, as they sink, down, down, to death, "lost, lost, lost!"
"Why, why, tell me why they are permitted to roam through the streets, plying their seductive arts? Where are your police? Where your city Fathers?—guardians of the morals of strangers and citizens! How can anything, male or female, remain pure in such an atmosphere of impurity? Where are your laws? laws of love that lift up the fallen. Where all your high-paid, well-fed city guardians, who should watch the city youth, to keep them from becoming impure?"
Echo gave the answer, and it reverberated back and forth from granite wall to freestone, from marble front to red-burnt bricks, from dark cellar to gas-lighted hall, from low dens of death to high rooms of wealth and fashion, from law makers to law breakers; echo came back with that one word, "Impure, impure, impure."
How the throng go thoughtlessly onward. Do they ever think—think what a sirocco blast from the valley of the Upas tree, is sweeping over this city? Do mothers ever inquire, ever think whether it is possible for their sons to escape the contagion of such company as they keep in the great evening promenade of this mighty Babylon? Have New York mothers no feeling of fear for their sons? or has "the pestilence that walketh in darkness," obtained such strength that this is overcome? or has the plague spot grown so familiar to their eyes that they no longer seek to wash it out? If they have given up their sons, if they have surrendered the great street to the almost exclusive occupancy, at night, of painted harlots; have they also given up their daughters, surrendered them to the wiles of the seducer? do they let them go out without fear, even in company with their male friends, to be jostled upon the side-walks by midnight ramblers, and seated at the same table, at some of the great "saloons," side by side with those who win to kill, whose trade is death, whose life is gilded misery, though enticing as the siren's song? Have they forgotten that we are all creatures of surrounding circumstances, subject to like influences, and liable to the same disease as those who breathe the same atmosphere, and if that is impure, those who breathe it may become so?
Even now, while I write, the "New York Daily Tribune," gives this "Item" to its readers:—
"Mysterious Disappearance.—On Sunday evening last, between six and seven o'clock, Miss G. C—— left her father in Spring street, near Broadway, to go to her brother-in-law's (Mr. B——), No. — Spring street, since which time nothing has been heard of her, and it is feared that she has been dealt foully with. She is seventeen years of age, good-looking and rather tall; dark complexion, and dark eyes; lisps somewhat when in conversation. She was dressed in plaid, light and dark stripe; Talma cape; straw bonnet, trimmed with white outside, and green and white inside. Her disappearance has caused the deepest affliction to her family, and any information that can be given will be gratefully received by her aged parent, No.—Spring street."