“Do not forget the unfortunates who dare not cross your guarded way.  If it do not suit you to act with those who have organized measures of reform, then hold not yourself excused from acting in private.  Seek out these degraded women, give them then tender sympathy, counsel, employment.  Take the place of mothers, such as might have saved them originally.  If you can do little for those already under the ban of the world,—­and the best considered efforts have often failed, from a want of strength in those unhappy ones to bear up against the sting of shame and the frigidness of the world, which makes them seek oblivion again in their old excitements,—­you will at least leave a germ of love and justice in their hearts, that will prevent their becoming utterly embittered and corrupt.”  And you may learn the preventives for those yet uninjured.  These will be found in a diffusion of mental culture, simple tastes, best brought by your example, a genuine self-respect, and, above all, the love and fear of a divine in preference to a human tribunal.  Let woman live for God and the development of her higher nature,—­live so that she can be self-helped, as well as helping,—­then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love, and be worthy of being loved.  Much is said about the underpay of woman as a cause of temptation.  It is for the interests of society that there should be an equality of compensation wherever there is an equality of distribution.  It is well for woman to ask herself if she is ready to assume the burdens that come from an equality of compensation, such as giving up the prospect of marriage, or of sharing with man the toil of the field, of the factory, as well as of the house.  Would woman be willing to take upon herself the responsibility of planning to economize, of building churches, railroads, of entering into a competition with man?—­Woman is dependent, not independent.—­For this reason man toils to keep his wife, and is ashamed to have his wife keep him.  His pride lies in having his home a joy and his wife a helpmeet, rather than to have his wife a rival and his home empty of happiness.

It is not alone by an excess of passion or of beauty that woman becomes a tempter.  The absence of love, and of beauty, sins of omission as well as sins of commission, are sources of temptation.  Man desires an educated woman.  Intellectually and spiritually she must be able to meet his wants, and render help, or she is a failure.  He tires of a useless toy or plaything, and cries out for a helpmeet.  Another has said, “The bad housekeeping, and the neglect of domestic duties, on the part of many wives, is, no doubt, attributable to the slovenly tenements, and inadequate providings, and careless neglect of the husbands.  But more husbands, we fear, are driven to shiftlessness and discouragement—­driven to the saloon and gambling-room—­by the extravagance or inefficiency, the disorderly arrangements or badly prepared food, the irritating complaints