"Places and honors have been bought for gold,
Esteem and love were never to be sold."

I look upon the vicious habits and abandoned character of Major Sanford
to have more pernicious effects on society than the perpetrations of the
robber and the assassin. These, when detected, are rigidly punished by
the laws of the land. If their lives be spared, they are shunned by
society, and treated with every mark of disapprobation and contempt.
But, to the disgrace of humanity and virtue, the assassin of honor, the
wretch who breaks the peace of families, who robs virgin innocence of
its charms, who triumphs over the ill-placed confidence of the
inexperienced, unsuspecting, and too credulous fair, is received and
caressed, not only by his own sex, to which he is a reproach, but even
by ours, who have every conceivable reason to despise and avoid him.
Influenced by these principles, I am neither ashamed nor afraid openly
to avow my sentiments of this man, and my reasons for treating him with
the most pointed neglect.

I write warmly on the subject; for it is a subject in which I think the
honor and happiness of my sex concerned. I wish they would more
generally espouse their own cause. It would conduce to the public, weal,
and to their personal respectability. I rejoice, heartily, that you have
had resolution to resist his allurements, to detect and repel his
artifices. Resolution in such a case is absolutely necessary; for,

"In spite of all the virtue we can boast,
The woman that deliberates is lost."

As I was riding out yesterday I met your mamma. She wondered that I was
not one of the party at our new neighbor's. "The reason, madam," said I,