Every animal and fowl will flee from the approach of danger; the trap must be hid, or in some way made to appear as something harmless; nature has endowed them to seek always self-preservation. With nothing but instinct to guide, they are easily caught by the skill and cunning of man, but never caught in the open; some, however, are more easily caught than others, but they must be trapped.
The Bible teaches that the Devil is a trapper; his snares are set everywhere--they are man traps; no spider ever spun a web more accurately for the moth than Satan's traps to catch men. It requires certain bait and certain traps for each particular animal and bird, but the snares for men are legion. Man has a threefold nature: body, mind, and spirit; each of these have many avenues of approach. As the trapper gains his knowledge of the furry tribe by association, so the Trapper of men, by the application of supernatural powers, in close contact and intimate association through the past millenniums, has become intimately acquainted with man.
There are no facts touching his habitat, food, passions, ambitions, weaknesses, yearnings, etc.--whether in the realm of body, mind or spirit--but the cunning trapper of the pit is more minutely acquainted than man is acquainted with himself.
If guileless and unsuspecting men and women were the only victims, the situation would not be so serious; not that one soul is of more value than another, but the facts are: _no one_ seems to be capable of discovering his hidden snares. The greatest and wisest--Alexanders, Anthonys, Napoleons, kings, sages and philosophers--have been captured by him at his will. What a shudder would go over the race if it could penetrate the veil of mystery and see the traps towards which we are moving; moving on to certain capture, but for Providential oversight and guidance. Domestic traps, political traps, social traps, business traps, religious traps; the location and bait are suited to individual likes and dislikes.
"My soul be on thy guard; ten thousand foes arise."
Our country is just beginning to awake to a system of trapping now being carried on in every city and town, so gigantic and heinous that we are dazed and frightened at its boldness. The great White Slave Traffic is carried on by traps, pure and simple; as carefully planned and skillfully executed as the methods of an old trapper who remains in the primeval forest to supply the fur market. The feelers and tentacles of this human devil-fish are running out in the highways and hedges: the factories, mills, department stores. But the traffic is not confined to the poor, uneducated girls at the ribbon counter or waist factory; girls of culture and experience are caught, but the bait used is very different. When once caught, not one in ten thousand ever escapes.