by Silverpen [Eliza Meteyard].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William & Mary Howitt) vol.2 #39 (25 Sep 1847).
Part the Second.
Innocent La Trouvée was eighteen, when Retzner, after a few hours' illness, died of one of those diseases incident to sedentary men. He had made no secret of his intentions respecting her; it was, therefore, probable, that this certainty of fortune covered the ignominy of her issue from a rag-gatherer's basket, and had already led to so many direct proposals to Retzner for her hand. These he had quietly negatived: her youth, her child-like simplicity of heart, her peculiar tastes, bound up, as they had been, with his own pursuits; her unobtrusive, yet spiritual exaltation of character,—were all obstacles. The secret, however, lay deeper: his intuitive perception of character had revealed it to him, but he had wisely resolved that time and nature should bring about that towards which his own wishes earnestly pointed, as not only means of happiness to Innocent, but uniting purposes, in their several conditions, sublime.
From the time that Innocent had left the loge de portier for her richer home, from the time her talents and their instructor became known, Retzner, as far as the independent nature of Camille Dispareaux would permit, had become the poor scholar's friend. He saw the great talents of Camille, and with that candour and humility peculiar to true natures, he saw that, whilst he himself was great as a collector of facts, whilst he was great in all the material evidences of science, here was one whose peculiar province it would be to combine and deduce from thence those great natural laws whose discovery is significant of human progress, and whose development serves as a guide to the moral and political reformer. These tastes, different yet alike, had led to the most unreserved intimacy between Retzner and Dispareaux. In an early stage of it the latter had still remained Innocent's instructor in the beautiful art, which to himself was but an accessory to higher science; and when that tutelage was over he still remained her guide. But in this progress of time affection had changed in character: Innocent, beheld in Camille not only the grave and kind brother twenty years older than herself, but the noble man of science of whom Retzner prophesied so many things, and whom it would be the glory of a life to love and minister to: whilst he, on the other hand, beheld the little affectionate creature of his poverty and early days, who had in so many ways directly helped on his better circumstances, grown into a gentle creature of eighteen, with an intellect as great, as her sense of duty was exalted. But both shrunk one from the other; she, because one so grave and intellectual as Camille could but look upon her as a child, and at best as an old acquaintance; whilst he, loving her with the deepest affection, knowing her beautiful heart, aware that hers was the intellect that would labour for and appreciate his own, still doubted the right of engrossing an affection, which might, more naturally turn to one younger than himself, and recoiled from the idea of seeming to aim at Retzner's fortune, through an alliance with Innocent. Thus matters stood when Innocent was seventeen. Retzner, who saw this struggle in the stern and conscientious man, who doubted the wisdom of their marriage till Innocent was older, seconded Camille's wish to quit Paris for a time, not merely for the sake of broken health, but of those studies that required uninterrupted solitude. Accordingly, about a year before his friend's death, Camille had gone to live amidst the vine-clad hills of those southern provinces of France that stretch downwards to the Mediterranean sea, and in the receipt of a small yearly pension from Retzner.
For a time after the anatomist's death friends crowded round Innocent, for, as had been expected, the whole of his large fortune was left to her, and his magnificent library and museum to Camille Dispareaux. But things were suddenly changed: a will had been made prior to the adoption of l'Enfant Trouvée, in which the museum and property were left to the Health Commission of the capital; the latter for the purpose of founding a hospital for the unfortunate; without other precise definition than that it should serve to demonstrate the great analogy between ignorance and public disease and public crime.
The two wills were brought before the law tribunals. Circumstances seemed in favour of the prior one, and the prospect of any immediate decision improbable, owing to the need of several witnesses, who, since the time of the first will, had died or left the capital. With this issue in prospect, which in one moment might bring back her original situation, Innocent, in spite of the advice of some old friends of Retzner, who hoped for the better result, accepted the small pension offered by the law tribunal till the settlement of the suit, and at once left the home of these latter years. It was better, as she wisely thought, to meet fortune half-way; many offered their protection and their homes to her, but these she steadily refused from all but one, and this was the offer of two small rooms rent free in the house of her old friend, Petite the barber. Not only did the good old man paint and paper, and make them in some way fitting to receive the costly luxuries which Retzuer had placed about Innocent's girlhood, but made old decrepit Antoine share his kitchen, under the pleasant fiction that he could help him in his business. Yet, heaven bless such fictions, they are the kindliest and the best that earth is witness of.
The pre-eminent talent of her pencil would have soon been employed, and profitably rewarded, would she have used it in illustrating the feuilletons, or serials of the hour; but the nobler work to which it had been accustomed was both difficult to procure, and scantily remunerated. She hid from all this need to work, and why? lest officious interference might deprive her of one of the great objects of her life—to serve Camille, and be worthy of that great mind she had always reverently loved, from the time he had first guided her baby hand. Yes, she determined to hide from him as long as possible the death of Retzner; and this was the easier, as he rarely read newspapers, and scarcely ever wrote letters, and in his far away province, it was not probable the truth would reach him. Yes, the sum allowed her by the tribunal she uninterruptedly forwarded to Camille, for its amount just met the frugal sum that he had accepted from the generosity of Retzner; but once the latter's death were known, her scheme, she knew, would fail; and thus the secret was hidden from Antoine, and he attributed her weary labours with the pencil and the engraving needle to mere habits and love of industry; dear child, ma mignonne, ma petite, still, as of old. But was she not justified? she thought; did she not save broken health? did she not thus give leisure to the student? did she not thus materially help the great labours of his life? did she not serve to fulfil the prophecies of Retzner, and thus indirectly repay all his lavish bounty? did she not do these things, and might not the time come when Camille would think her worthy of his own better, higher nature? Perhaps it might! and woman again testify how earnest is her devotion, when she looks up to, and reverences an intellect more commanding than her own.
Thus some months went on, when accident, as it were, opened the true mission of her life; and whilst developing the exalted humanity of her nature, combined the very object of Retzner's early will. After a day spent in labour, Innocent had been to a distant suburb to see her old nurse, Madame Amand, when she was stopped by a crowd collected round an obscure wine-shop. The owner, an old and bloated woman, was leaning, half-undressed, over the open window-sill, and replying with execrations to the entreaties of a younger and more decent woman.
"Dying! Ah! ah!" laughed the first: "rare news, neighbour! rare news!"
"You will not come, then? Can nothing soften you?" And the more decent woman spoke this tenderly. But the only answer was another peal of coarse laughter, at which she placed her hands on each side of her cap to stop her ears, and turned away. As she moved from the crowd, Innocent recognized her as one of the nurses in an hospital she had often visited with Retzner, and so, following, spoke to her.
"That mistress of the cabaret, Mam'selle," replied the woman, with more feeling than officials often show, "is the mother of a poor unfortunate lying dying this very night in the Hospital of the Magdelonettes. Ah, Mam'selle, nothing can touch that femme effrontée—hardened woman. Even the priest has been to her, for the girl has taken to her penitence wonderfully; her prayers, Mam'selle, would touch the heart of the just."
Could this be the girl Innocent had seen, years ago, coquetting before the student's mirror? Was this the fruit of silly vanity, that had stood like a gaudy poppy in the sun? she asked herself this, and inquired of the woman.
"Her name is Parfaite," said the nurse; "but these miserables hide their real names. Yet, when I think of it, the mother said, Marie. Yes, it was so."
Saying she would accompany her to the hospital, Innocent led the way to her lodgings at the barber's; and with a little wine for the dying girl, she brought away beneath her mantelet a small rough sketch of the beautiful grisette that she had once found amongst Camille's drawings, and probably thrown originally aside, as not being sufficiently faithful. Yet it was so like, that one glance at it brought back in full freshness that long-ago fête-day when she had sat a little child by Dispareaux's side.
It was past the hour when strangers were admiticd within the hospital; but Retzner's name and her own were more than sufficient passport. Following the nurse through nearly a long ward, where other nurses, with their high Norman caps, were passing to and fro, Innocent, at the lifting of a frail curtain hung before the narrow compartment allotted to each bed, beheld the dying creature. Though shrunken and wasted to a shadow by a fearful cough, she sat upright in the bed; but when she saw that only a stranger followed the nurse, she sunk back upon her pillow, and buried her face within it.
"There, don't take on so, Parfaite," said the nurse: "the old woman isn't worth a care, my girl."
"Oh, but it is fearful to die utterly alone," sobbed the girl; "or only with those around that see you as you are, and who, knowing not, or being unable to fancy, your better days, cannot for a minute put by the thought that those that lie before them are corrupt; nor touch them, nor speak to them as if the evil, like a cerement, had fallen off, and we were once more pure in our human sisterhood.[1] Ah! if my mother could have thought me once more a little child, and innocent as one. But even this is not for me!"
The nurse could not comprehend this touching principle of our better nature. "Well, I've done the best, I'm sure, and so have the doctors; and then there are the girls come to see you. What more would such as you have?' And thus saying, she took a cup off the small bracket-table, and left the bed.
Innocent knelt down beside it, and put her arm around the girl. "I saw you in your better days, Marie: let me call you so! I can look upon you and see not a shadow on your face."
The dying girl rose on her elbow, looked Innocent keenly in the face, and, parting back her long dark hair, seemed to inquire if it were a visit for mercy or for reproach.
"I am the good doctor Retzner's daughter, Marie. You knew him, perhaps? all the sorrowful knew him."
"Yes, in prison, in the hospital. You see how guilty I've been." She covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.
"I do not see that, Marie—not now, indeed. God gives moments when all evil passes from us, my penitent."
The girl looked up again, and wound her arms about Innocent's neck. "You knew me in my better time, then, Mam'selle?"
Innocent uncovered the picture, and held it up; the light fell upon it, and made it look beautiful. Here was visible representation of purity and beauty, decay and crime. The girl looked on it with streaming eyes.
"You are pure, you are good, you have learning," she said slowly, at length. "Oh, it is such as you, Mam'selle, that we want to be merciful unto us. It is not doctors, it is not hospitals, it is not nurses only, that we want. We want such as you, to whom in our better moments we could fly and say, Cover us with the shadow of your purity. Let such as you speak to us, let such as you compassionate us; do not let us have only prison-walls and sermons to reform us—both mostly make us hypocrites. Think you so, Mam'selle?"
"I do, Marie. I want to make the great truths of mercy active, my penitent. I want to show the world in many ways such contrasts as this picture and yourself, and show it is not the province of charity and purity to utterly crush the fallen human flower, but to raise it, if possible, with a gentle hand."
"You think so?' and the girl looked still more keenly into Innocent's face.
"I do, indeed I do, my poor one."
Yes, I am sure of it, Mam'selle—the truth lives in your eyes. Well, you will not be too proud to do my last bidding? I feel I can ask you." And as she spoke, she drew a small ivory crucifix from beneath the pillow. "Take this to a girl named Lucrèce; she lives in the Rue —, at the address written on this slip of paper. She is grander and better than I, Mam'selle, for she has never yet sunk so low as the prison for theft; for even amongst us there are degrees of vice. Take this to her, and speak as gently as you speak to me."
"Let her redeem herself in such way as you can show, and go back to her old father in Rome—he is a picture-dealer, Mam'selle—and do all she can to wipe away the tears she knows he's shed. She may be hard at first—she hides a broken spirit beneath this mask of hardness; but when your pure words have made it fall away, you'll find Lucrèce noble, for she has fed me and others when forsaken by every human thing; she has stripped herself to clothe the naked; she has spoken when all other tongues have been tied, till I and others have sometimes asked ourselves, How can Lucrèce be sinful? She has come to me in prison, in the hospital; she would be here to-night, only she knows we like to die, with the quiet holiness the priest has left around us unbroken; for we fancy that Purity is a sacred veil, that hides the past from our eyes. We otherwise fear death."
Exhausted, she now laid her face back upon the pillow, and for a long time seemed as if passed away. Even the nurse, who had come back, seemed to think so. But she looked up again, and seemed glad that Innocent bent over her.
"Can you in heart, Mam'selle," she very faintly whispered, "think that sin has passed away, and I am once more as that picture?"
"I can, my poor one, my dear one," and Innocent's tears fell fast.
"Thank you, thank you. Cover me close. Let me hold your hand, let me press it; it is a support, it is a guide. The shadow of purity is over me, and this—this—is death."
Many minutes after, when the nurse leant over Innocent, and touched the girl, she was found quite dead, Innocent's hand fast locked in hers, and pressed against her rigid lips.
Two days after, Camille's rough sketch hung in Innocent's small chamber, and by its side another of the dying Magdalen. A contrast, and a pitiful one; yet a noble sermon unto ail who would see the errors of our social state, and aim at human progress.
Accompanied by Madame Amand, Innocent, some days after Marie's death, sought out Lucrèce. She was a beautiful woman, of thirty-two or three; a little passé, it might be; though her hair, of that glorious hue that Titian has given to the Cenci, still swept round her like a beautiful veil. But she was hardened, scornful, even impudent. The gaudy finery, that covered, as is mostly the case, the miserable rags beneath, was worn with the hauteur of a queen. "Did she ask help from people who called themselves respectable? Had she sent for them? Was she their slave? Could they not keep within their own homes, without prying into the secrets of another?" These were hard words; but, recollecting that this hardness is the mask most often worn by shame, Innocent took her leave gently, and said, in parting, "We may meet again, Lucrèce."
The law case still lingered, and might for months. Innocent now saw the prudence of the step she had taken; for if the process of the court were declared against her, she had already met fortune half-way. The world around, the few friends left to her, knew not of her solitary struggles for bread, not merely for herself, but Antoine; nor imagined them, because of the allowance paid by the law tribunal. For three quarters of a year this had now been sent to Camille, without any evidence of his knowledge of Retzner's death, as was about this time shown by a letter from Camille, addressed to his dead friend. Innocent opened it. There was wonder expressed of his, Retzner's, long silence; inquiries after his health, with word that his, Camille's, was but indifferent, though the great labour of his life was progressing well and hopefully. Then there was much said of Innocent—much that was not meant evidently for her eye, of praise, and love spoken under the guise of brotherly affection. Oh, how cherished was this letter! how it made the present bearable and the future hopeful! Might she not yet attain to the height of his great mind? and was it not well that she already indirectly helped his service towards humanity, by securing his present simple life from poverty? Yet the truth could not be long concealed, she feared; though, to ward this knowledge off as long as possible, she wrote to him, and speaking of Retzner with all the affection that was his due, merely said that he had gone a "long journey."
Since the death of Marie she had visited the prisons and hospitals regularly. In one of the former she became interested in the fate of a girl about ten years old, undergoing a short imprisonment for some petty theft. Upon her release, Innocent got a consignment for her to one of the government reformatory schools for female children; and seeking out the guartier from whence she had come, found that this child had been but one of many others employed by an old woman to steal about the streets and bring the produce home. Though assisted by the surveillance of the police, and protected by their care, she found access into this immense but miserable dwelling difficult; and even when obtained, her words amongst this miserable crowd made no impression, or, if made, it was immediately effaced by those whose interest it was to do so. But ways were opening.
Marie had been dead about three months, when, one fine winter's day, business with a print and picture-seller took Innocent to one of the principal streets. As she passed the shop-window, a cursory glance at a richly-dressed female looking in assured her that this was no other than Lucrèce. Whatever was her natural pity for repentant vice—for vice conscious of its enormity—for vice despairing—for vice willing to return to good—for vice hungering, yet Innocent was one to scorn vice worn with brazen effrontery in the blaze of day; and, however she might compassionate, she knew that such was not the hour to speak and save. She passed into the shop upon her business. The print-seller was showing some pictures to an old man leaning across the counter, and who, criticising the works before him, spoke fluently in Italian. Innocent understood the language, and listened attentively, for the old man spoke learnedly of art.
"Ah," said he, at the conclusion of a critique on the perspective of a picture before him, "this draped figure puts me in mind of a chef d'œuvre of our sculptor Nattili. A wonderful man, Monsieur; particularly in all that reveals his knowledge as an anatomist."
"He was perhaps a pupil of our great citizen, Retzer."
"Yes, I think that is the name he speaks of. Signor Nattili is my next-door neighbour, Monsieur."
"Ah, but not your city's greatest sculptor, or, rather I should say, the world's. I thought—"
"Oberlingen the Dane? Yes, you're right. Nattili, as I was going to say, Monsieur, is, like Canova, remarkable for grace: Oberlingen, for grandeur and nature combined. Ah! you should see a figure he intends for the Angel of Mercy. Nothing since the days of Phidias has approached it: so simple, yet so sublime. It is not yet out of his atelier, for the face is still unwrought, as he has a fancy, they say, that he shall yet see the human face from which he may fashion his ideal. God grant he may; for I believe earth is never wholly destitute of these angelic natures."
Whilst he was thus speaking, the picture-seller had moved a picture nearer the window, for the sake of light; and now the old man moved towards it. He had scarcely resumed his conversation about Nattili, when a quick-gathered crowd outside in the street darkened the window, and voices cried out a woman had fallen. Imagining the truth, Innocent followed the old man and the picture-seller to the door, just in time to see the drooping, insensible face of Lucrèce, as she was borne away by the police from the place where she had fallen. Trying to follow, and see if she could be of service, Innocent got entangled in the crowd. When she escaped and returned to the shop, the old man was gone, and where no one knew, for his name was even unknown.
The second night after this, Innocent was sought for by a weather-beaten man, a boatman of the Seine, who had with difficulty found out her abode. A woman on the previous evening had attempted to drown herself from one of the quays, but her dress bearing her up for a time, and her body floating down rapidly with the stream, she had been picked up and conveyed into the cabin of one of those washerwomen's boats, that cover the river in so many parts. The mistress of the boat, more humane than many of her neighbours, had torn off the creature's soddened finery, placed her in a warm bed, and forced some weak wine down her throat. For a long time it seemed a doubtful struggle between life and death; and even when sensibility returned, burning fever and ague succeeded. However, when she could make herself understood, she took her ear-rings from her ears, the last thing, as she said, she possessed in the world, bid the good woman repay herself, and send some one in search of Innocent, whose abode was known at several of the hospitals. After many hours, the boatman sent was successful. Innocent lost not a moment in following the messenger. She knew it was Lucrèce who sent, that the hour of repentance had come, that the false mask which covered shame had at last been cast aside, and human nature sought to redeem its sins.
It was so, it was Lucrèce; she had seen that old and tender man, her father; remorse had conquered fear; she had sought death in her maddened frenzy.
"I would return," she said, weeping, when she had implored Innocent's forgiveness; "I would return and ask that old man to forgive fourteen years' desertion; for having blighted his best hopes; for having bitterly returned his fondest love; for having betrayed his all-reposing trust; but there is no hope for such as me."
"There is, Lucrèce."
"None, lady; I have otherwise no resource; destitution looks me in the face."
"If," said Innocent, after a few minutes' pause, "if you are sincere, if henceforth you walk as others do, if henceforth you will do justice to the nature which it is said is yours, if you will scorn impurity as I myself scorn it, destitution shall not prevent you. You shall share as a sister should share, my home and substance, such as they, for the present, are. But there must be no recurrence to this subject, no stepping back; you must be true to me, for I can place no locks or bars over you, and only by divine consciousness and purposes of good can you bury the past, and make bright the future; for my home is pure, Lucrèce, and so it must remain. Be thus, and I will be a sister, always looking mercifully upon the evil gone."
Bathed in tears, Lucrèce promised Innocent she would.
Though very ill, she was removed from the boat that night, rowed to the nearest quay, and placed in a fiacre was driven to the barber's, and old Antoine, who never questioned the right of what his darling child, as he called her, did, fetched a neighbouring surgeon, and performed a thousand offices. For many days Lucrèce lay between life and death, but a change came at last, and she gradually recovered. Even whilst too weak to leave the room, she tried to show her gratitude and love for Innocent. Preparing the chamber, anticipating Innocent's wants in a thousand ways, and insensibly purifying her own by learning, from both Antoine and the aged barber, the divineness of the character that had had mercy for the error which the world had hitherto mercilessly trampled down.
Lucrèce proved a noble character, worthy of all that had been said of her by the dying unfortunate. And the duty she soon took upon herself proved of inestimable value. She could go where Innocent could not, she knew the haunts of guilt and misery; she knew where were repentant hearts that only waited the signal of salvation. Even that den where children were made criminal, she entered with success, and drawing other repentants round her, purified the place as it were, for the diviner teacher.
In this way, sufficient female children were soon gathered together, children from the chiffonniers especially, and other lairs of wretchedness, to justify the opening of a school in this low neighbourhood, and accordingly, with even such means as Innocent had, two large old rooms were hired, and such repentant creatures as had no other resource or home, were allowed the one to live in by day, and the other by night, after its use as a school-room. As many of these repentants were somewhat educated, they taught at first in this rude school under the eye of Lucrèce, and Innocent's resources were drained for all these things, humble as they were. Book by book went, the jewels that Retzner had lavished on her girlhood, at last her wonderful drawings, though reluctantly parted with. Many of the women sought needle-work, and assisted themselves and the funds of the school by their earnings. In a short time, the school was organised, and the scholars sufficiently tame for Innocent to teach there three evenings in a week; and henceforth, on such nights she was to be found, like was once the Holy One amongst his disciples.
Two years were now passed since Retzner's death, and no witnesses having been found to attest the prior will, the matter was brought before the law tribunal for termination. The probable hour of decision was carefully kept from Innocent by Antoine and the dear old barber; and they, waiting round the court of justice, were the first to hear that the award was in Innocent La Trouvée's favour. They took a fiacre, and drove to the school: it was her night of being there. They found her sitting calmly amidst some hundred miserable children, and moving quickly across the room, Antoine knelt down before her feet with upraised hands:—
"The angel said right—Take the young child. And so I did thee, Innocent. The Lord is very merciful—means for thy great service are thine!"
He had not risen when many friends—friends from the hospitals, friends from the courts of justice, officers of the Commission de Santé, who in their official capacity had already heeded her marvellous work; friends of Retzner's from far and wide through the capital—came to tell her the result, and bear her back to that old home which the law had now made hers; Lucrèce, like the dear disciple, following, and Retzner's spirit surely hailing, the spirit of his child upon his threshold! As of old, the first thought in joy was Camille. Innocent immediately wrote a letter to him, but it was returned in a few days; he had left the province for Rome. Thither she determined to go, and with Lucrèce started directly on the journey. It was glorious autumn weather; and the earth rejoiced in its magnificent garniture of vineyard, forest, and field. Lucrèce knew that one dear dwelling; but she dare not enter first; Innocent did, and told the old man she had brought his daughter. "And, Signor, though she has passed through vicissitude and error; though she forsook you, she is penitent and pure, and take her to your heart as such." She came in, and kneeling, her natural veil of glorious hair hid the old man's happy tears.
And when Lucrèce had risen, Innocent asked the old man if he knew one Camille Dispareaux.
"He lodges in this house, Signora. He finishes an extraordinary work to-night, and sets out to Paris to-morrow."
"Do not follow me; I seek him, and must see him alone."
How her heart beat as she climbed the wide staircase! She lightly tapped at the door she had been told was his, entered, and approached the table where he was, like Gibbon, closing an immortal book; nor did he hear her till she was by his side. One look, and every fragment of the veil was cast away, and in his passionate joy she knew she was beloved; nor had he need of words; he knew it was returned.
In two hours she had told him of all the past, and marked the future; and when, unknowing she was there, Nattili and Oderlingen, his friends, came in, Camille raised Innocent, and said, "Nattili, your old friend, Innocent La Trouvée; Oderlingen, some one you will reverence. Gentlemen, my betrothed."
* * * * *
Two happy years are now gone by in marriage and in joy. A magnificent hospital, as large as a caravan-sary, has not been long finished; in one wing is placed Retzner's great museum, and the other is made the dwelling of Camille Dispareaux and his wife. The government of this great hospital embraces two purposes; the reception and teaching, on advanced humanitary principles, penitent women and miserable female children, and the development of that sublime creed, which Camille Dispareaux has taught to all the world. The relation of disease and deformity to the infringement of the laws of nature, and the impossibility of human progress without the development of social morals.
But something unusual has happened this night within the hospital; women congregate from the wards, and led by still golden-haired Lucrèce, enter Camille's house through a private door, and ascend the gorgeous staircase. They pass into a magnificent chamber, light as falling snow and going to a closely-curtained bed, Lucrèce brings forth a babe, Innocent's first-born, and but that day old, and one by one they kiss its fair hand, with womanly love and tenderness. With the babe yet in her arms, Lucrèce undrapes a figure newly placed within the room. It is the matchless statue of the Dane, not of an ideal goddess of mercy, but graven from living lineaments, those of what it is, an ANGEL OF THE UNFORTUNATE.
It is like offering the young babe at the shrine of Mercy, for on the garment of this matchless statue is cut—"Take the young child."
1. Parent Duchatelet, and others, remark upon the singular exaltation and purity of spirit observable in an unfortunate class of women, in their better and repentant moments. Vice, as it were, thus flies from vice; and evil purifies itself. This is another testimony to the inherent good mingled up so largely with the frailties of human nature.
My readers will perceive that this is the tale promised some time since in my article on Mr. Spooner's Bill; but my many literary engagements delayed it till now. Though I look upon the great social evil alluded to as mainly attributable to a vicious social condition, and consider that HUNGER and IGNORANCE are the main roots of prostitution, still there are methods of collateral reform that we may help to develop. By God's help we shall eradicate evil government. By God's help we shall make practical the sublime charity and mercy of our religion, —SILVERPEN.