for the girl
I had come to find, a young man approached me and quite simply asked
me to introduce him to some "nice girl," saying that he did not know
any one there. On my replying that a public dance hall was not the
best place in which to look for a nice girl, he said: "But I don't
know any other place where there is a chance to meet any kind of a
girl. I'm awfully lonesome since I came to Chicago." And then he added
rather defiantly: "Some nice girls do come here! It's one of the best
halls in town." He was voicing the "bitter loneliness" that many city
men remember to have experienced during the first years after they had
"come up to town." Occasionally the right sort of man and girl meet
each other in these dance halls and the romance with such a tawdry
beginning ends happily and respectably. But, unfortunately, mingled
with the respectable young men seeking to form the acquaintance of
young women through the only channel which is available to them, are
many young fellows of evil purpose, and among the girls who have left
their lonely boarding houses or rigid homes for a "little fling" are
likewise women who openly desire to make money from the young men whom
they meet, and back of it all is the desire to profit by the sale of
intoxicating and "doctored" drinks.

Perhaps never before have the pleasures of the young and mature become
so definitely separated as in the modern city. The public dance halls
filled with frivolous and irresponsible young people in a feverish
search for pleasure, are but a sorry substitute for the old dances on
the village green in which all of the older people of the village
participated. Chaperonage was not then a social duty but natural and
inevitable, and the whole courtship period was guarded by the
conventions and restraint which were taken as a matter of course and
had developed through years of publicity and simple propriety.

The only marvel is that the stupid attempt to put the fine old wine
of traditional country life into the new bottles of the modern town
does not lead to disaster oftener than it does, and that the wine so
long remains pure and sparkling.

We cannot afford to be ungenerous to the city in which we live without
suffering the penalty which lack of fair interpretation always
entails. Let us know the modern city in its weakness and wickedness,
and then seek to rectify and purify it until it shall be free at least
from the grosser temptations which now beset the