re is no God, or He would
never have let them do to me what they did. Every night I had prayed
to God, and if there were a God anywhere, He would surely have heard my
mother's prayer--when she was dying--she asked God to protect her poor
little motherless girl. It is a sad world, Lady." The girl's eyes
were dry and her voice unbroken. There is a limit even to tears and
her eyes were cried dry.

According to the laws of the Dominion of Canada, the man who stole this
sweet child from the railway station, would be liable to five years'
imprisonment, if the case could be proven against him, which is
doubtful, for he could surely get someone to prove that she was over
fourteen years of age, or not of previously chaste character, or that
he was somewhere else at the time, or that the girl's evidence was
contradictory; but if he had stolen any article from any building
belonging to or adjacent to a railway station, or any article belonging
to a railway company, he would have been liable to a term of fourteen
years. This is the law, and the church folds its plump hands over its
broadcloth waistcoat and makes no protest! The church has not yet even
touched the outer fringe of the white slave evil and yet those high in
authority dare to say that women must not be given the right to protect
themselves. The demand for votes is a spiritual movement and the
bitter cry of that little Scotch girl and of the many like her who have
no reason to believe in God, sounds a challenge to every woman who ever
names the name of God in prayer. We know there is a God of love and
justice, who hears the cry of the smallest child in agony, and will in
His own good time bind up every broken heart, and wipe away every tear.
But how can we demonstrate God to the world!

Inasmuch as we have sat in our comfortable respectable pews enjoying
our own little narrow-gauge religion, unmoved by the call of the larger
citizenship, and making no effort to reach out and save those who are
in temptation, and making no effort to better the conditions under
which other women must live--inasmuch as we have left undone the things
we might have done--in God's sight--we are fallen women! And to the
church officials, ministers and laymen who have dared to deny to women
the means whereby they might have done better for the women of the
world, I would like to say that I wonder what they will say to that
Scotch mother, who lay down happily on her death-bed believing