These were American _ladies;_ that is, they were of that class
who have wealth and leisure to make full use of the day, and confer
benefits on others. They were of that class whom the possession of
external advantages makes of pernicious example to many, if these
advantages be misused.
Soon after, I met a circle of women, stamped by society as among the
most degraded of their sex. "How," it was asked of them, "did you come
here?" for by the society that I saw in the former place they were
shut up in a prison. The causes were not difficult to trace: love of
dress, love of flattery, love of excitement. They had not dresses like
the other ladies, so they stole them; they could not pay for flattery
by distinctions, and the dower of a worldly marriage, so they paid by
the profanation of their persons. In excitement, more and more madly
sought from day to day, they drowned the voice of conscience.
Now I ask you, my sisters, if the women at the fashionable house be
not answerable for those women being in the prison?
As to position in the world of souls, we may suppose the women of the
prison stood fairest, both because they had misused less light, and
because loneliness and sorrow had brought some of them to feel the
need of better life, nearer truth and good.
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