es; and
that some Christian women, in their own circles, have no hesitation at
the same style of talking.

You take a step down hill, when, without resistance, you allow any one
to put into your ear a vile innuendo. If, forgetting who you are,
any man attempts to say such things in your presence, let your
better nature assert itself, look the offender full in the face, and
ask--"What do you mean by saying such a thing in my presence!" Better
allow a man to smite you in the face than to utter such conversation
before you. I do not care who the men or women are that utter impure
thoughts; they are guilty of a mighty wrong; and their influence upon
our young people is baleful.

If in the club where you associate; if in the social circle where you
move, you hear depraved conversation, fly for your life! A man is
no better than his talk; and no man can have such interviews without
being scarred.

I charge our young men against considering uncleanness more tolerable,
because it is sanctioned by the customs, habits, and practices of
what is called high life. If this sin wears kid gloves, and patent
leathers, and coat of exquisite fit, and carries an opera-glass of
costliest material, and lives in a big house, and rides in a splendid
turn-out, is it to be any the less reprehended? No! No!

I warn you not so much against the abomination that hides in the lower
courts and alleys of the town, as against the more damnable vice that
hides behind the white shutters and brownstone fronts of the upper
classes.

God, once in a while, hitches up the fiery team of vengeance, and
ploughs up the splendid libertinism, and we stand aghast.

Sin, crawling out of the ditch of poverty and shame, has but few
temptations; but, gliding through the glittering drawing-room with
magnificent robe, it draws the stars of heaven after it.

Poets and painters have represented Satan as horned and hoofed. If I
were a poet I should describe him with manners polished to the
last perfection, hair flowing in graceful ringlets, eye a little
blood-shot, but floating in bewitching languor; hands soft and
diamonded; step light and artistic; voice mellow as a flute; boot
elegantly shaped; conversation facile, carefully toned, and Frenchy;
breath perfumed until it would seem that nothing had ever touched his
lips save balm and myrrh. But his heart I would encase with the scales
of a monster, then fill with pride, with beastliness of desire,
with recklessness