Counter-Currents. Agnes Repplier

meaning was in his embarrassed tones and in his heightened colour. The girl was the more composed of the two. She paused a moment, and then repeated distinctly, 'No, I would n't.'

      "The room had been painfully quiet, but at this there was a round of applause, ​led by the women spectators. It was the first general spontaneous outburst of the session. 'Emily' was then dismissed."

      Dismissed with the "round of applause" ringing in her ears, and in her mind the comfortable assurance that her theory of life was a sound one. Also that a warm-hearted public was prepared to exonerate her, should she find a virtuous life too onerous for endurance. Is it likely that this girl, and hundreds of other Emilys, thus encouraged to let down the walls of resistance, can be saved from the hopeless failure of nerve which will relegate them to the ranks of the defeated? Is it likely that the emotional hysteria of the applauding audience, and of hundreds of similar audiences, can be reduced to reason by such sober statistics as those furnished by the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York, or by the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills? Less than three per cent of seven hundred girls ​examined at the Bedford Hills reformatory pleaded poverty as a reason for their fall; and, of this three per cent, more than half had been temporarily out of work. On the other hand, twenty per cent were feeble-minded, were mentally incapacitated for self-control, and as much at the mercy of their instincts as so many animals. These are the blameless unfortunates whom vice commissioners seem somewhat disposed to ignore. These are the women who should be protected from themselves, and from whose progeny the public should be protected.

      It is evident that triumphant virtue must have strong foundations. Income and recreation are but slender props. Becky Sharp was of the opinion that, given five thousand pounds a year, she could be as respectable as her neighbours; but, in our hearts, we have always doubted Becky. "Where virtue is well rooted," said the watchful Saint ​Theresa, "provocations matter little." All results are in proportion to the greatness of the spirit which has nourished them. When Cromwell made the discomforting discovery that "tapsters and town apprentices" could not stand in battle against the Cavaliers, he said to his cousin, John Hampden, that he must have men of religion to fight with men of honour. He summoned these men of religion, fired them with enthusiasm, hardened them into consistency, and within fourteen years the nations which had mocked learned to fear, and the name of England was "made terrible" to the world.

      For big issues we must have strong incentives and compelling measures. "Where the religious emotions surge up," says Mr. Gilbert Murray, "the moral emotions are not far away." Perhaps the mighty forces which have winnowed the world for centuries may still prove efficacious. Perhaps the ​illuminating principles of religion, the ennobling spirit of patriotism, the uncompromising standards of morality, may do more to stiffen our powers of resistance than lectures on "Life as a Fine Art," or papers on "The Significance of Play," and "Amusement as a Factor in Man's Spiritual Uplift." Perhaps the stable government which ensures to the Industrious Apprentice the reward of his own diligence is more bracing to citizenship than the zealous humanity which protects the Idle Apprentice from the consequences of his own ill-doing.