Look out upon that fallen creature whose gay sally through the street calls out the significant laugh of bad men, the pity of good men, and the horror of the pure. Was not her cradle as pure as ever a loved infant found? Love soothed its cries.
Sisters watched its peaceful sleepy and a mother pressed it fondly to her bosom. Had you afterwards when spring flowers covered the earth, and every gale was odor, and every sound was music, seen her fairer than the lily or the violet, searching them, would you not have said, “Sooner shall the rose grow poisonous than she; both may wither, but neither corrupt.”
And how often, at evening, did she clasp her tiny hands in prayer! How often did she put the wonder-raising questions to her mother, of God, and heaven, and the dead, as if she had seen heavenly things in a vision! As young womanhood advanced, and these foreshadowed graces ripened to the bud and burst into bloom, health glowed in her cheek, love looked from her eye, and purity was an atmosphere around her.
Alas, she forsook the guide of her youth! Faint thoughts of evil, like a far-off cloud which the sunset gilds, came first; nor does the rosy sunset blush deeper along the heaven, than her cheek at the first thought of evil.
Now, ah, mother, and thou guiding elder sister, could you have seen the lurking spirit embosomed in that cloud, a holy prayer might have broken the spell, a tear have washed its stain! Alas, they saw it not! She spoke it not; she was forsaking the guide of her youth. She thinketh no more of heaven. She breatheth no more prayers.
She hath no more penitential tears to shed, she drops the bitter tear upon the cheek of despair,—then her only suitor. Thou hast forsaken the covenant of thy God. Go down! fall never to rise! Hell opens to be thy home! —BEECHER.