able. Look
at this girl all radiant with beauty and smiles--beautiful even in spite
of her long-lost virtue and life of sin. For,

"You may break, you may ruin, the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."

The man seated by her side is in love with her. It may be for her love
he has given up mother, sister, betrothed, home, his fair name, his
prospects in life, his hopes of heaven; and she no more heeds his
passionate vows than does the rock the murmur of the waves at its feet;
and already her wanton eye glances round the room for other victims to
sacrifice to her vanity and pride. Oh, the deceit and craft and hardness
of women such as she! And yet on account of such in distant
village-homes there is sadness, and the mother and sister deny themselves
many a luxury, and grayhaired fathers mourn over their lost and
loved--their Benjamins--born and nurtured to come to such an end.
Perhaps at the next table the picture is reversed; that woman is
beautiful, and her face has a smile, and there is a flush upon her cheek,
and the wine has driven from her heart for a while bitter memories; but
she is not happy, though loud be her laugh; and if she dared to sit and
think of the hour when she fell, and of the mire and dirt along which she
has crawled, of what she is now in her rustling silks, and what she was
in her peasant dress then--eyes full of grief, and dim with tears, would
look into her own; and out of that gilded room, and away from all the
song and laughter and wine, would she not rush home to die? Yet if she
now sells herself to pay to-morrow's baker's bill, is she to be trod on
by the high-born beauty that goes up to God's altar with one for whom she
has no love, for an establishment that will make her bridesmaids yellow
with well-bred jealousy? But we are all gay here. Is not the room light
and cheerful? Is not the whole aspect all mirth-inspiring? Does not
dull care flee the flowing bowl? Jolly fellows are sitting and telling
each other tales which you would be sorry your sister should hear, and
which no mother would believe would be ever heard by son of hers without
a manly protest. Women are laughing and drinking as if theirs were not
lives of shame. Sated men about town languidly smoke, and the eye of the
gloomy refugee sparkles, and his heart beats quicker, as he hears the
song of his father-land. The hours hasten on--the company depart--the
wanton beauty, fl