The New England Watch and Ward Society provides a new window into the history of American Protestantism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By suppressing obscene literature, gambling, and prostitution, the moral reform organization embodied Protestant efforts to shape public morality in an increasing intellectually and culturally diverse society.

Wealthy and leisured Roger Lawrence adopts an orphaned twelve-year-old girl, Nora Lambert, and raises her as his eventual bride-to-be, but once Nora matures into a beautiful young woman, she is attracted to two other men. Henry James later disowned the book and spoke of "Roderick Hudson" as his first novel

Excerpt from Watch and Ward While he was so engaged there came into the room a person who attracted his attention by the singularity of his conduct. This was a man of less than middle age, good-looking, pale, with a pretentious, pointed mustache and various shabby remnants of finery. His face was haggard, his whole aspect was that of grim and hopeless misery. He walked straight to the table in the centre of the room, and poured out and drank without stopping three full glasses of ice-water, as if he were striving to. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.