vice in one form or
another. I do not think I am overstating the situation when I say that
it would be reasonably inferred from most of our so-called musical shows
and farces that the natural, customary and excusable amusement of the
modern man after working hours--whether the father of a family or a
youth of twenty--is a promiscuous adventuring into sexual immorality.

I do not regard as particularly dangerous the vulgar French farce where
papa is caught in some extraordinary and buffoonlike situation with the
washerwoman. Safety lies in exaggeration. But it is a different matter
with the ordinary Broadway show, where virtue is made--at least
inferentially--the object of ridicule, and sexuality is the underlying
purpose of the production. During the present New York theatrical season
several plays have been already censored by the authorities, and either
been taken off entirely or so altered as to be still within the bounds
of legal pruriency.

Whether I am right in attributing it to the influence of the French
music halls or not, it is the fact that the tone of our theatergoing
public is essentially low. Boys and girls who are taken in their
Christmas holidays to see plays at which their parents applaud
questionable songs and suggestive dances, cannot be blamed for assuming
that there is not one set of morals for the stage and another for
ordinary social intercourse.

Hence the college boy who has kept straight for eight months in the year
is apt to wonder: What is the use? And the debutante who is curious for
all the experiences her new liberty makes possible takes it for granted
that an amorous trifling is the ordinary incident to masculine
attention.

This is far from being mere theory. It is a matter of common knowledge
that recently the most prominent restaurateur in New York found it
necessary to lock up, or place a couple of uniformed maids in, every
unoccupied room in his establishment whenever a private dance was given
there for young people. Boys and girls of eighteen would leave these
dances by dozens and, hiring taxicabs, go on slumming expeditions and
excursions to the remoter corners of Central Park. In several instances
parties of two or four went to the Tenderloin and had supper served in
private rooms.

This is the childish expression of a demoralization that is not confined
simply to smart society, but is gradually permeating the community in
general. From the ordinary dinner-table conversatio