gallantry, but through the woman's
finer natural taste, greater grace of manner, and keener perceptions.
For these virtues she would be worth ten per cent. more to her employer
than a man. But she would get it by earning it, not by asking for it.

In the summer of 1885 I made another trip to Europe. The day I reached
Charing Cross station in London the exposures of vice in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ were just issued. The paper had not been out half an hour. Mr.
Stead, the editor, was later put on trial for startling Europe and
America in his crusade against crime. There were the same conditions in
America, in Upper Broadway, and other big thoroughfares in New York, by
night, as there were in London. I believe the greatest safety against
vice is newspaper chastisement of dishonour and crime. I urged that some
paper in America should attack the social evil, as the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ had done. A hundred thousand people, with banners and music,
gathered in Hyde Park in London, to express their approval of the
reformation started by Mr. Stead, and there were a million people in
America who would have backed up the same moral heroism. If my voice
were loud enough to be heard from Penobscot to the Rio Grande, I would
cry out "Flirtation is damnation." The vast majority of those who make
everlasting shipwreck carry that kind of sail. The pirates of death
attack that kind of craft.

My mail bag was a mirror that reflected all sides of the world, and much
that it showed me was pitifully sordid and reckless. Most of the letters
I answered, others I destroyed.

The following one I saved, for obvious reasons. It was signed, "One of
the Congregation":

"Dear Sir,--I do not believe much that you preach, but I am certain that
you believe it all. To be a Christian I must believe the Bible. To be
truthful, I do not believe it. I go to hear you preach because you
preach the Bible as I was taught it in my youth, by a father, who, like
yourself, believed what in the capacity of a preacher he proclaimed. For
thirty-five years I have been anxious to walk in the path my mother is
treading--a simple faith. I have lived to see my children's children,
and the distance that lies between me and my real estate in the
graveyard, cannot be very great. At my age, it would be worse than folly
to argue, simply to confound or dispute merely for the love of arguing.
My steps are already tottering, and I am lost in the wilderness. I pray
because I am afr