alas! too often necessity forces its hapless victims, and from
whence a relentless world--without hope of regaining the lost
jewel-hurls them down a short life, into a premature grave. Your
church is near by, but it never steps in here to make an inquiry;
and if it chance to cast a suspicious look in now and then, it is
only as it passes along to inquire the state of the slave market, of
so much more importance is the price of men. Your common school (a
thing unknown, and held extremely dangerous in Carolina!) may be
your much talked of guiding star to virtue; your early education is
your bulwark against which the wave of vice is powerless; but unless
you make it something more than a magnificent theory-unless you seek
practical means, and go down into the haunts of vice, there to drag
up the neglected child, to whom the word early education is a
mystery, you leave untouched the festering volcano that vomits its
deadly embers upon the community.

Your homilies preached to pew-holders of fashion, who live
sumptuously, ride sumptuously to church of a Sunday, and meekly
enjoy a sumptuous sermon for appearance sake, will, so long as you
pass unheeded the haunts of vice, fall as chaff before the wind. You
must make "early education" more than the mere motto of future
happiness; you must go undaunted into the avenues of want and
misery, seek out the fallen child, forbear with her, and kindly
teach her how much good there is in its principles, its truths.

Pardon, generous reader, this digression, and keep our arm while we
see of what metal are the votaries at the shrine of Madame Flamingo.
"I am-that is, they say I am-something of an aristocrat, you see,
gentlemen," says the old woman, flaunting her embroidered apron, and
fussily doddling round the great centre-table, every few minutes