Page:A Few Hours in a Far Off Age.djvu/51

52 Justice, bustle up to your bench of wisdom, fouled by so much of wrong and idiocy! Have those poor profaned bodies seized! Men have so seared their hearts it matters little about breaking a few! Fine, imprison, insult the wretched beings! Rid the earth of them, that fresh, less-jaded victims may take their places! But, my worthy judicial and clerical masters, let no harm come to the cowardly factors of all this maddening impurity—the real prostitutes—the men! For they tell us they were made in the image of their God. They are wanted in their churches to look respectable—and worship Solomon.

Not very long ago a young girl sought judicial protection from ruffians who had treated her in so cruelly debasing a way that could we have records of early man's morality they could contain nothing worse, probably not so infamous.

The acts were not denied. For defence it was made known that she had been cohabiting with another of this brute type, who aided the others in the performance of their bestial deeds. That was sufficient for the beneficent wisdom of our Dogberries. Cast her to perdition! But save those righteous young Solomons! Soon they will be of law-making age!

Oh, women of pure lives, have you thought enough to think what was the fate of that child—she was only sixteen—when she left the court of justice, after hearing the heartless decree? Reflect what is her life now; and if you have left your hearts room enough for blood, they must bleed at such imaginings. Should the hunted girl kill one of her assailants, she would be hanged. I think we all agree that any death would be better than the dreadful life to which the judicial and most unbenevolent idiots doomed her. Women abandon your injurious style of clothing! Allow