and, so long as there is no actual harm done, why should they care? Very
well; but why, then, should they care if they encounter those same
disreputable characters when they go to drop a ballot in the ballot-box? It
will be a more guarded and distant meeting. It is not usual to dance
round-dances at the ward-room, so far as I know, or to bathe in clinging
drapery at that rather dry and dusty resort. If such very close intimacies
are all right under the gas-light or at the beach, why should there be
poison in merely passing near a disreputable character at the City Hall?

On the whole, the prospects of Mrs. Blank are not encouraging. Should she
consult a physician for her daughters, he may be secretly or openly
disreputable; should she call in a clergyman, he may, though a bishop, have
carnal rather than spiritual eyes. If Miss Blank be caught in a shower, she
may take refuge under the umbrella of an undesirable acquaintance; should
she fall on the ice, the woman who helps to raise her may have sinned.
There is not a spot in any known land where a woman can live in absolute
seclusion from all contact with evil. Should the Misses Blank even turn
Roman Catholics, and take to a convent, their very confessor may not be a
genuine saint; and they may be glad to flee for refuge to the busy, buying,
selling, dancing, voting world outside.

No: Mrs. Blank's prayers for absolute protection will never be answered, in
respect to her daughters. Why not, then, find a better model for prayer in
that made by Jesus for his disciples: "I pray Thee, not that Thou shouldst
take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the
evil." A woman was made for something nobler in the world, Mrs. Blank, than
to be a fragile toy, to be put behind a glass case, and protected from
contact. It is not her mission to be hidden away from all life's evil, but
bravely to work that the world may be reformed.