cians
who studied their symptoms would be horrified to see them appearing in
the homes of their friends.

And from New York, the centre of the wealth and culture of the country,
these vices spread to every corner of it. Theatrical companies and
travelling salesmen carried them; visiting merchants and sightseers
acquired them. Pack-pedlers sold vile pictures and books--the
manufacturing or importing of which was now quite an industry; one
might read catalogues printed abroad in English, the contents of which
would make one's flesh creep. There were cheap weeklies, costing ten
cents a year, which were thrust into area-windows for servant-girls;
there were yellow-covered French novels of unbelievable depravity for
the mistress of the house. It was a curious commentary upon the morals
of Society that upon the trains running to a certain suburban community
frequented by the ultra-fashionable, the newsboys did a thriving
business in such literature; and when the pastor of the fashionable
church eloped with a Society girl, the bishop publicly laid the blame
to the morals of his parishioners!

The theory was that there were two worlds, and that they were kept
rigidly separate. There were two sets of women; one to be toyed with
and flung aside, and the other to be protected and esteemed. Such
things as prostitutes and kept women might exist, but people of
refinement did not talk about them, and were not concerned with them.
But Montague was familiar with the saying, that if you follow the chain
of the slave, you will find the other end about the wrist of the
master; and he discovered that the Tenderloin was wreaking its
vengeance upon Fifth Avenue. It was not merely that the men of wealth
were carrying to their wives and children the diseases of vice; they
were carrying also the manners and the ideals.

Montague had been amazed by the things he had found in New York
Society; the smoking and drinking and gambling of women, their hard and
cynical views of life, their continual telling of coarse stories. And
here, in this under-world, he had come upon the fountain head of the
corruption. It was something which came to him in a sudden flash of
intuition;--the barriers between the two worlds were breaking down!

He could picture the process in a hundred different forms. There was
Betty Wyman. His brother had meant to take her to the theatre, to let
her see Rosalie, by way of a joke! So, of course, Betty knew of his
escapades, an