To the
question, "When must it be done?" "Immediately;" is the readiest answer;
though it is an answer which would perhaps be less inconsiderately and
indiscriminately given, if it were known how many young creatures have
come to a premature death in consequence of it, and how many hearts have
been hardened by the oppression which it necessitates. Nor does the evil
stop there. The dressmakers' apprentices in a great city have another
alternative; and it is quite as much to escape from the intolerable
labours which are imposed upon them in the London season, as from any
sexual frailty, that such multitudes of them adopt a vocation which
affords some immediate relief, whilst it ensures a doubly fatal
termination of their career. The temptations by which these girls are
beset might be deemed all-sufficient, without the compulsion by which
they are thus as it were, driven out into the streets. Upon them, "the
fatal gift of beauty" has been more lavishly bestowed than upon any
other class--perhaps not excepting even the aristocracy. They are many
of them, probably, the spurious offspring of aristocratical fathers,
and inherit beauty for the same reason as the legitimate daughters of
aristocrats, because the wealth of these persons enables them to select
the most beautiful women either for wives or for concubines.
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