Should, perchance, young women read this story, let me tell them it is true in every particular, but not the whole truth, for there are some things that cannot be told.
Again and again I have heard poor stricken women cry: "How can you! how can you!" More than once my manhood has been roused, and I have struck a blow in their defence.
If there is one piece of advice that, in the light of my experience, I would like to burn into the very consciousness of young women, it is this: if they have fastened their heart's love about a man, and find that thorough respect does not go with that love, then, at whatever cost, let them crush that love as they would crush a serpent's egg.
And the same holds good with men: I have known men in moments of passion marry young women, trusting that a good home and an assured income would restore them to decency and womanhood--but in vain! I saw a foul-looking woman far from old sent again to prison, where she had been more than a hundred times.

She had also served two years in an inebriate reformatory.

Fifteen years ago, when I first met her, she was a fair-looking young woman.

Needless to say, I met her in the police-court.

A short time afterwards she came to tell me that she was married.