Show AN OUTCAST I As one reads the story of crime and seduction that the Pall 1a1l Gazette has given to the world it cannot but induce reflection Whether the exposures of the Gazette will accomplish any real good it is I difficult to say although it seems that I some muchneeded modifications of I the criminal laws of England will be made which will be a desirable work The recent demonstration in Hyde Park was as much if not more a demonstration demonstra-tion against an order of society as one in favor of virtue and yet in that immense procession which wended its way through the streets of London to Hyde Park there must have been many sorrowing mothers many who had lived a hifl of sin and I shame Perhaps there were in it those who had in early maidenhood been lured by the false gaiety and pleasure of London Lon-don life to quit a peaceful and quiet home I where kind parents watched over all and love was ever flowing forth If such there were perhaps they looked back upqn that happy time a time gone i never to return and sighed as they thought of their own shame and their I parents sorrow Were there any there j who were like Ann Oxford street Poor Ann Whence did she come whither I did she go When she spent her l last I sixpence to save from deaths grasp a 1 wanderer and an outcast for the time did I she her elf go hungry Whatever may have been her faults and her follies or crimes still there coursed throughher veins the milk of human kindness and the world owes her gratitude for she saved a life that the world could ill have afforded to lose Had it i not been for Ann of Oxford street where would have been those charming works of De I Quinceys The opium eaters Confessions I Confes-sions would never have been written I The opium eater lost sight of Ann and in I the long years after they separated never to meet again he often sought her and i gazed into the face of thousands of out I casts such as Ann yet he never saw her nor could ever find a find a trace of her j I lIe speaks of his search for her thus I i To this hour U e in 1821 I have never hoard It syllable about her I This amongst such troubles as most I i men meet with in this life has been my heaviest affliction If she lived doubtless we must have been sometimes in search of each other at the 1 very same moment through the mighty i labyrinths of London perhaps even 1 within a few feet of each othera barrier < 110 wider in a London street often I amounting in the end to a separation for eternity During some years I hoped that she di < 1 live and I suppose that in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word myriad I may say that on my different dif-ferent visits to London I have looked into many many myriads of female faces in the hope of meeting her I should know her again amongst a thousand I saw her for a moment for though not handsome she had a sweet expression i of countenance and a peculiar and grace i iit > r rL C1 I ful carriage of head I sought her I have said in hope So it was for years bnt now I should fear to see her and her i cough which grieved me when I parted I from her is now my consolation I now I wishto see her no longer but think of i her more gladly as one long since laid in tI t I i the grave of a Magdalen taken away j I before injuries and cruelty had blotted out j and transfigured her ingenuous nature or the brutalities of ruffians had completed II complet-ed the ruin they had begun I Such is part of the story of an outcast I and London is filled with such whose history I his-tory if written would doubtless much j the same If the present exposure of the i I I Pall Mall Gazette can save any young i girls from the sad fate of Ann of Oxford i street it will have done a good work ray such be its result |