teaching dancing. Still I heedlessly continued in the business, until
something occurred which set me to thinking.

I met on a train, while leaving town, one day a young woman, who, a few
months before, had been a member of my select dancing academy. She had
been ruined there, and was one of the discarded ones when the school was
closed for a few weeks, as all dancing-schools have to be every little
while, to get rid of those girls who have met with a fate similar to
hers.

I entered into conversation with her and found she could no longer
endure being shunned and slighted by all her old companions, and was
running away from home. I knew that her parents would be heart broken,
and that she, without the protection of a home, would soon sink to utter
abandonment, and I tried every persuasion to induce her to return to the
home she was leaving. I--who was still teaching the very thing which had
been her ruin, now that self-respect and all for which life was worth
the living, was lost to her forever--I tried to save her from further
degradation.

After I had argued for some time with her she turned fiercely upon me,
her once beautiful eyes now filled with a desperation born of despair,
and said, with a look and tone of reproach which I shall never forget:
"Mr. Faulkner, when you will close your dancing schools and stop this
business, which is sending so many girls by swift stages on a straight
road to hell, _then, sir_, and not till then, will I think of reform."

I was stirred by her words as I had never been stirred before. But for
them I might, perhaps, not have been writing this book to-day. At this I
know many may sneer and say that I have myself done more than most men