ting female weakness and bait their
trap accordingly. And so a young girl, too frequently, walks alone and
unadvised into the meshes of an acquaintanceship which leads to her
ruin. It is perhaps as useless to ask the men who are base enough to
conceive these things to refrain from publishing them, as it is to urge
the mercenary proprietors of certain newspapers to refrain from printing
them in their columns. Yet it must be perfectly clear to all
right-thinking minds, that it is in vain for parents to warn, parsons to
preach, friends to advise, for the good to deplore, and the ignorant to
wonder, at the increasing deterioration of our metropolitan morals,
while these tempting lures to feminine destruction are so alluringly
displayed.

It would be doing very imperfect justice to this theme did we fail to
record our conviction that some of the salesladies and shop girls of the
city are thoroughly good, virtuous, honest and respectable. Many of
them, amid unhealthy influences and corroding associations, preserve the
white flower of a blameless life, and become the honored wives of
respectable citizens. But these are a small minority. At the same time
it is useless to disguise the fact that there are others whose character
needs stronger colors for proper delineation than have hitherto been
employed. There are those among pretty shop girls who simply give up
their leisure time to surreptitious appointments. This is the worst and
most dangerous form in which this prevalent vice stalks abroad, and it
more clearly stamps the character of a community than does its more open
and brazen manifestations. Many causes may lead to a woman's becoming a
professional harlot, but if a girl "goes wrong" without any very cogent
reason for so doing, there must be something radically unsound in her
composition and inherently bad in her nature to lead her to abandon her
person to the other sex, who are at all times ready to take advantage of
a woman's weakness and a woman's love. Seduction and clandestine
prostitution have made enormous strides in New York, and especially
among the young women and girls connected with stores, within the last
decade.

Not long ago a woman, who then occupied a prominent position in a Sixth
avenue store, was met up-town in the evening. She is very good
looking--strong and lithe and tall, with a cloud of handsome hair that
glistens like bronze; large dreamy eyes that flash and scintillate
witchingly; a handsome,