astray by the very wordnetdesire which should 
have ended in home and marriage, with even her best 
friends condemning her, her own  condemning her, 
the whole face of the world set against her, her feet 
stood in slippery places. 

There is another life open to .the woman whom the 
world judges and rejects and condemns; a life short, 
bad, desperate ; a life of revenge, of , of deceit ; a 
life in which woman, outraged and betrayed by man, 
turns bitterly upon him, to become the tempter, the be 
trayer, the ruiner of man, to visit  and  on 
the society that condemns her. 

Many a young man has been led to gambling, and 
drinking, and destruction ; many a wife s  has 
been destroyed ; many a mother has wept on a sleepless 



A  IN PERIL. 329 

pillow over a son worse than dead, only because some 
woman, who at a certain time in her life might have been 
saved to honor and good living, has been left to be a ves 
sel of wordnetanger fitted to destruction. For we have seen in 
Maggie s history that there were points all along, where 
the girl might have been turned into another and a bet 
ter way. 

If Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, instead of railing at her 
wordnetdesire of feathers and flowers,