CHAPTER XIII.

PROMENADING THE STREETS.

This is Yonge street at 10.30 on a Thursday night. I will take up my stand in the shadow of this corner and watch the crowds roll by. What a moving mass of young folks, for the overwhelming majority are young folks. Some of them too young. It is after ten, and yet this bunch of juveniles moving south are not going home, judging by what I observed while I was walking, for I have been as far north as Elm street. I wouldn’t be surprised if those two very immature maidens in the kilted skirts passed up and down two or three times yet. I have some difficulty in recognizing them, for there are 100 girls on the street who appear to have been got up on the same model. There may be slight differences of dress not discernible by the average male eye, but in essentials this seems to be a distinctive class. For the most part the other loungers on the street take it easy—walk slowly and languidly, but this tribe of whom I speak are in couples, and they walk along with a fine, graceful, swinging gait that carries them swiftly forward. None of them are out of their teens. Their dress is not loud. The colors are subdued, and the style of the Kate Greenaway order. The skirt is short, and enables a curious on-looker to decide the color and

TEXTURE OF THE HOSE WORN

and the plumpness or attenuation of the young woman’s ankles. They are certainly youthful, and this short skirt makes them absolutely girlish in appearance, but in other respects by bold and artistic padding they attain a robustness, not to say matronliness, which is rather paradoxical. The swiftness of their walk makes them really the most noticeable personages on all Yonge street.

Anyone who sees them oscillating regularly between King and Queen streets would come to the conclusion that they are on “the mash,” but if you select a couple and keep them in sight for a little while you will find that they entirely ignore the presence of the men whom they encounter in their path. These latter, however, do not ignore the girls. They are frequently greeted as they go along with low-toned remarks, such as “Hello, girlie!” “Good evening, Birdie!” and with sounds which I have observed are produced when one person kisses another. To these endearing salutations they either vouchsafe no notice or else they treat the intruder to such a reply as causes him to let them pass unnoticed the next time. This class of our citizenesses seems to me to be a very modern production, and their habits and usages had cost me some thought.

“Why do they parade up and down the streets?” I said to a long-headed detective friend, who sometimes gives me pointers and cigars. “They don’t seem to be

HERE TO MAKE ‘STRIKES,’

and they are not shopping, and if they want to take the air it is neither necessary to walk so fast nor take to such a crowded street. I suppose it is none of my business, but, my dear fellow, I believe in the saying which the Greek dramatist puts into the mouth of one of his characters, ‘I am a man, and whatever concerns men interests me.’ Of course this concerns girls.” Taking no notice of this brilliant sally, my friend went on to say: “You think these young women are not intent on making a strike. Those two we have just passed, and who took no notice of your wistful gaze, would have returned it with interest if you had been the proper sort of a party. Those young women, sir, are the best readers of human nature with whom I am acquainted. They took you in at a glance, and they said, ‘He wouldn’t stand the biled eysters or the Inja pale ale.’ I know that pair of business-like females, but I do not know their exact capacity for bivalves and beer. I am certain though that it is phenomenal. Now, there goes another miss, some of whose history is familiar to me. She is pale-faced, with thin, straight nose and sphynx-like expression. That icy little thing black-mailed a prominent merchant of this town not long ago, and almost tortured him into his grave. Detectives were hardly able to scare her off. There is another who, if she prevailed on you to get into a cab with her, would try to make you believe that you were a very bad man, and it would require a portion of your salary, paid periodically, to

ALLAY HER RUFFLED FEELINGS.

“Where do they live?”

“Most of them live with their relatives. Some of them work by fits and starts. I assure you they are as passionless as marble statues, and yet they are as fully cognizant of the nature and constitution of man as the most learned professors of the universities. I believe that the great majority keep themselves personally free from gross immorality, yet in their pursuit of what they think to be fun, combined with pieces of cloth, silk hose, high-heeled boots and bright ribbons, they go as near the fires of sin as it is possible to go and not get scorched, though I can assure you that the smoke of evil has so blackened them that they are morally as bad as those who have fallen, and should be avoided by decent men and virtuous women.”

“On what then, do they base their claims to man’s gratitude. I mean that gratitude that expresses itself in presents of gewgaws and finery?”

“It is all built up on hope and fear. I tell you, sir, that these maidens—there’s Polly B⸺ just gone by; I’ll tell you something about her presently. These maidens, as I was saying, find their chief game among the ranks of the old, staid, bald-headed married men. These old fellows in whom wickedness lives though youth be dead, are flattered by what they think to be a mash made on one in whom throbs

THE FRESH BLOOD or GIRLHOOD.

It is simply wonderful how easily such men—shrewd old fellows that could bargain with Shylock on the Rialto—can be hood-winked and hoodooed by a slip of a girl. But I could tell you of scores of cases where toothless old men have been led a terrible dance by just such a girl as that Jessie C., who this moment flitted by us.”

“What is the end of all these goings on?”

“What is the end of it? The end of it is often very close to the beginning. A few weeks shows our old Romeo that Juliet may be young, but she is not innocent. In some cases they make an endeavor to stick to their victim, but as a general thing they soon get everything out of the old fool, and then laugh at and discard him.”

“But I mean what becomes of the girls?”

“Well, sir, wonderful to say, in a great many instances they don’t go from bad to worse, but sometimes improve. I know some of them who have got married. I can’t say that any of them are happily married. In most cases the husbands must have known all about the “amusements” which occupied his wife’s attention in girlhood, and are as lacking in decency as she ever was. Probably he was not only aware of it but shared in the “gifts” extracted from “his old nobs,” as they affectionately name their victims. But wonderful as it may seem, some of these unions are blessed with considerable happiness.”

“You say that many of them amend their ways. What about the others?”

“The others are to be found in the fast houses of Toronto, Hamilton, Detroit, and Buffalo.”

“Well, don’t you think that even that is a very dreadful state of affairs? The way you speak one would think that it was a subject of congratulation that

MORE DID NOT GO TO PERDITION.”

“Perhaps I do speak a little more hopefully than the facts warrant, but it seems to me so remarkable that any of them should escape going completely to the bad that it perhaps gives that tone to my remarks.”

“Have you ever formed any idea how such an evil as this might be lessened?”

“I have thought of it often. My opinion is that parents are largely responsible for it. There is no use in talking, a mother or father is very much to blame if they allow their children to be out on the streets till all hours without knowing what they are doing. I tell you, sir, one of the most serious signs of the times is the slackening of the authority of parents. Children now-a-days, except in rare instances, have not that reverence for their parents which was inculcate when I was a boy.”

“There’s a good deal in what you say, but don’t you think that it is but the natural reaction from the manner that was formerly adopted by parents towards their children? Instead of respect and love, parents tried to inspire their children with fear and awe. There surely is a happy medium.”

“There is; but only a wise and conscientious parent strikes it. I know of cases where children know almost any other man

BETTER THAN THEIR FATHER.

They see him but seldom, and wouldn’t care if they saw him less. The mother is perhaps weak minded and characterless, and as a consequence the children are allowed to drift wherever their inclinations or their passions direct. Poverty is no reason why a father should neglect the training of his children. Indeed, the poor man has often more chance to keep an eye on his offspring than the rich man whose time is taken up with business and society. So that poverty is no excuse for this sad neglect. Just to illustrate what I mean: Two weeks ago I saw on the street a girl dressed very richly. She wore a silk dolman, trimmed with rich fur. Everything else was to match in costliness and richness. Four years ago she was a small girl whom I saw every day. She was as slatternly a little thing as you would see in a day’s walk. But as time went on there came a change in this and she began to spruce up. The change was very rapid. Indeed, not only did she show more neatness of dress, but actually the articles she wore were of a value that would naturally cause anybody to enquire where did she get them. But natural as would seem such an enquiry her parents neglected to make it, and finally she threw off the mask by openly adopting a life of shame. Then her parents bewailed and moaned at their misfortunes. I was looking after some ostrich feathers which were stolen, and in the search for them I had occasion to visit a house of ill-fame on Albert street. In this house S⸺ had taken up her abode. She knew me and knew that I was acquainted with her whole history. I questioned her and her answers were to the effect that she was quite satisfied with her life, and thought that it was infinitely to be preferred to that which she had led as a girl at her home. She is not naturally bad, but her training had been such as to make her believe that any way by which good clothes, nice food and some fun could be obtained with little work, was the way which it was best to take. She forgot or never comprehended her loathsome, beastly shame, and compared her slovenly, loveless childhood with her present condition of rich fare, fine feathers, lovers, race-meetings and theaters, and decided that the latter was the best. Poor girl—poor wretch, I might say—if she could only pierce the future and see the end of it all. She’s on the hill-top of shame now, where the sun is shining, but God help her when she goes down, as surely she will, amongst the slime and dirt which she will find at the foot, and in nine cases out of ten it does not take over three or four years to go from the top to the bottom.”