Australian Tales - Setis

willingly choose this delicate and distressing subject for my pen; nor do I
enter upon my task with a light feeling; but a fatherly love for, and an
earnest desire to guard the virtue of the young maidens of this land,
constrain me to offer a few words of counsel, which I pray them to
ponder over.
I would speak to you, fair girl, whose bright eyes glance over these
sketches! In words of affectionate warning, I would say to you, beware
of the first advances of the bold designing man. One repellent look,
indicative of the horror with which your pure young mind regards his
rude remarks, full of hidden meaning, his sensual leers, the undue
pressure of your gentle hand, or any other ungentlemanlike way in which
his insidious work is begun. One such look may save you from a
repetition of the rude familiarities of those traitors, with whom you are
too often thrown into accidental contact. Very few such fellows would
have the courage to renew an attack, when thus foiled in the first
instance, for they are usually as cowardly as they are treacherous. Poor
Mary May neglected that precaution; perhaps she had never been warned
of the danger of encouraging the forward salutations of strangers;
howbeit she did not repel young Wolfe's first advances; an intimacy
sprung up, and in a very short time she fell a victim to the practised arts
of the seducer. Pardon me, dear young reader, for naming you in the
same lines with that polluted wreck under the gas lamp yonder; and for
beseeching you to take warning by her sad fate, and flee from the voice
of the flatterer. Pardon me, I ask, and remember that I knew her when
she was as lovely and as pure as you are now; and when all about her
pathway was sunshine and joy.
I shall never forget the heart-rending scene which my eyes beheld in
widow May's cottage, a little more than a year afterwards; a scene which
I should like to compel every seducer to witness before receiving a
merited flogging. Months before I had heard of the faux pas of the
village belle; for in small country communities scandal flies swifter than
swallows. I had heard of her intimacy and her flirtations with Lionel
Wolfe, and had warned both Mary and her mother too of their danger,
and advised them at once to sever their connection with the unprincipled
rake, who from his antecedents I judged was plotting the young girl's
destruction. But my advice was too late to be of real service to them, for
Wolfe had completely gained the girl's affections, and had persuaded her
mother that he loved her daughter, and intended to make her his wife. I
need not enter into painful details; it is the old sad story, which has been
told hundreds of times before, which has been the death blow to many
aged parents, and “brought down their grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave.” Poor Mary fell a victim to the plots of Lionel Wolfe: how could
it be otherwise after she had once admitted his influence? She was a
comparatively easy prey, for her mind was unfortified by religion; she