“She did not escape, however, the unpleasant incidents natural to such a career.  Her mother accompanied her to every performance, and was, in so far, a shield to her; but she was beset with visitors at the house; she was annoyed by men who stopped and claimed acquaintance with her on the streets; she received many gifts, flowers, fruit, jewelry, and all the other tempting sweet nothings which it is thought bewitch the heart of frail woman.  But they had no effect upon her.  Only goodness seemed to cling to her, and evil fell far off from her.  You may set two plants side by side in the same soil—­one will draw only bitterness and poison from the earth; while the other will gather, from the same nurture, nothing but sweetness and perfume.

     ’For virtue, as it never will be moved,
     Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;
     So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
     Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
     And prey on garbage.”

“Among the men who pestered Christina with their attentions was a young fellow named Nathan Brederhagan, the son of a rich widow.  He was one of those weak and shallow brains to whom wealth becomes only a vehicle in which to ride to destruction.  He was in reality all that I pretended to be—­a reckless, drunken, useless spendthrift, with no higher aim in life than wine and woman.  He spent his days in vanity and his nights in debauchery.  Across the clouded portal of this fool’s brain came, like a vision, the beautiful, gentle, gifted Christina.  She was a new toy, the most charming he had ever seen, and, like a child, he must possess it.  And so he began a series of persecutions.  He followed her everywhere; he fastened himself upon her at the theater; he showered all sorts of gifts on her; and, when he found she returned his presents, and that she refused or resisted all his advances, he grew so desperate that he at last offered to marry her, although with a consciousness that he was making a most heroic and extraordinary sacrifice of himself in doing so.  But even this condescension—­to his unbounded astonishment—­she declined with thanks.  And then the silly little fool grew more desperate than ever, and battered up his poor brains with strong drink, and wept in maudlin fashion to his acquaintances.  At last one of these—­a fellow of the same kidney, but with more enterprise than himself—­said to him:  ‘Why don’t you carry her off?’ Nathan opened his eyes very wide, stopped his sniffling and blubbering, and made up his mind to follow this sage advice.  To obtain the necessary nerve for such a prodigious undertaking he fired up with still more whisky; and when the night came he was crazy with drink.  Obtaining a carriage and another drunken fool to help him, he stationed himself beside the pavement, in the quiet street where Christina lived, and but a few doors distant from her house; and then, as she came along with her mother, he seized upon her, while his