text:  But the softer sex whose own tenderness of heart and whose power over the hearts of others make all converse with them so potent for good or for harm--maidens and wives in the prime of life and in the pride of beauty opening their souls to a confessor revealing all their secret emotions their hopes their disappointments their fears their failings submitting to his questions and hanging upon his words of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation full of awful interest and on which it is impossible to be at ease where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a check--but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings