He had been speaking on behalf of a new Rescue Society, a society in which all the workers were those who had them-selves been among the fallen–who had gone down to the depths, and had been saved from deep waters, and knew the horror of a vicious life as no virtuous woman can know it.

«it is noble–heroic in a chaste woman to go amongst her fallen sisters,» he said, «but half the time it is heroism wasted, self-sacrifice in the wrong place. These dear saints don’t know what to say to the sinners. The fellow-feeling is wanting. Only the bitter experience of sin can teach them the way to their erring sister’s hearts.»

And then he had drawn a moving picture of the redeemed sinner–no longer young, no longer fair, pleading with youth and beauty, vain happy, prosperous, tripping with light foot along the primrose path.

«We don’t want to save them only at the last, when the tempers have ceased to temp, and the trade in sin is over; we want to startle them in the morning of sin, while the sun shines, and their world is full of roses. You ladies can hardly grasp the fact that for these your sisters vice means a life of pleasure, and virtue a life of toil.  They were starving in garrets, perhaps, yesterday–and to-day they are feasting in five rooms, wearing fine clothes, driving in the sunshine, caressed, praised, adored, perhaps.  The only woman who can startle and win them is the woman who can tell them what comes afterwards–can show them that hideous future in the fierce light of her own experience–a woman who is not afraid to speak such words as you ladies have never heard, and could not utter even if you knew them. Sex to sex, sister to sister, it is the fallen who must rescue the fallen.»