Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/147

GIRLS—NIGHT HOUSES. penetrate, and draw forth enongh of groundwork character, of which to make an analysis, and you shall find the chief ingredients are the same original base amalgama of iniquity as is first above depicted. Men who are led astray by such low-bred vestals, are not likely to possess much discernment at the time, if they ever did exceed their next-door dolt; but they must be far gone in liquor indeed, and in a such a state of confirmed stupidity as to be scarcely worthy of being saved from the shipwreck, if they cannot distinguish, when they get into the dirty purlieus of St. Giles's, those of Orchard-street, Westminster, of Golden lane, or the Borough Clink! If they cannot see light from darkness, or the difference between a cut-throat corner and a dining room, they deserve neither commiseration or help, in their misfortunes.

Low neighbourhoods like those which we have named, have night-houses, where assemble the worst and most unprincipled part of one sex, waiting for prey to be brought in by the other. Woe to the man who ventures among them! The unfledged youth, no more than the veteran upon town, is their peculiar game; all is fish that comes to net; old and young, gentle and simple, when they once enter these pestiferous abodes, are