of-all-work are easy prey. Then letters are written and sent to
the clubs and to the patrons of such infamy, and they are furnished with
all the particulars, and the price of the victim's willing or unwilling
seduction and shame. This state of things is progressive. Last year the
returns of the City missionaries show an increase in their districts of
fallen women to the number of 1,035. Of course it is only with the dregs
that the City missionary comes in contact. While a woman preserves her
health, and youth, and good looks, she lives in better quarters than
those into which the City missionary generally finds his way. For a time
she is gay; she dresses fine, spends money freely, drinks, and sings, and
then prematurely becomes old, and sad, and poor.

Is this ever to be so? Is woman always to sell herself to man? And is
man to dream that the smile thus bought is no lie, but a precious truth?
I don't suppose that if men were temperate universal chastity would be
the result; but that we should have less immorality is, I think, an
admitted fact. Why are women, prostitutes? Chiefly, we are told,
because of poverty; and of all causes of poverty, is not intemperance the
greatest? Would you see how one vice is connected with another? Come up
Portland-place at night. True, there are no public-houses here, but they
are plentiful enough in the neighbourhood; and in them all night the men
and painted women from Portland-place madden themselves with drink. Yes,
here are the women that should have been British wives and mothers
utterly perverted, and dragging down with them many a heart that might
have emerged into a noble life. Lust and intemperance have slain them.
"Lost, lost, lost for ever!" is the cry that greets us as we look at
them.

An association has been formed in this neighbourhood to wipe away this
plague spot. In their report, the committee state, when the movement
commenced, which issued in the establishment of the association at the
close of 1857, the condition of the districts (All Souls and Trinity),
comprising the streets lying immediately to the eastward of
Portland-place, was perfectly appalling. It was then calculated that in
those streets there were not less than 140 notorious houses of ill-fame,
containing from six to ten fallen women each, which fearful array of
prostitution was swelled by a large number of young women, lodging in the
districts, who were known to be gaining their livelihood