Excerpt: ...This is not a very great result; but after all the taking of even a few people from this hellish life and their restoration to decency and self-respect is well worth the cost and labour of the mission. The Officers told me that they meet with but little success in the case of those women who are in their bloom and earning great incomes. It can scarcely be otherwise, for what has the Army to offer them in place of their gaudy, glittering life of luxury and excitement? The way of transgressors is hard, but the way ...
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Excerpt: ...This is not a very great result; but after all the taking of even a few people from this hellish life and their restoration to decency and self-respect is well worth the cost and labour of the mission. The Officers told me that they meet with but little success in the case of those women who are in their bloom and earning great incomes. It can scarcely be otherwise, for what has the Army to offer them in place of their gaudy, glittering life of luxury and excitement? The way of transgressors is hard, but the way of repentance is harder; at any rate, while the transgressor is doing well. On the one hand jewels and champagne, furs and motors, and on the other prayers that talk of death and judgment, plain garments made by the wearer's labour, and at the end the drudgery of earning an honest livelihood, perhaps as a servant. Human nature being what it is, it seems scarcely wonderful that these children of pleasure cling to the path of 'roses' and turn from that of 'thorns.' With those that are growing old and find themselves broken in body and in spirit, who are thrust aside in the fierce competition of their trade in favour of younger rivals; those who find the wine in their tinsel cup turning, or turned, to gall, the case is different. They are sometimes, not always, glad to creep to such shelter from the storms of life as the Army can offer, and there work out their moral and physical salvation. For what bitterness is there like to that which must be endured by the poor, broken woman of the streets, as scorned, spat on, thrust aside, she sinks from depth to depth into the last depth of all, striving to drown her miseries with drugs or drink, if so she may win forgetfulness even for an hour? Sometimes, too, these patient toilers in the deep of midnight sin succeed in dragging from the brink those that have but dipped their feet in its dark waters. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus-no one becomes altogether filthy in an hour-runs the old Roman saying, ..
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