no
prejudice can be supposed. Read Mrs. Kemble's "Journal" of her stage
life. Read the opinion she gives of it all in her later
"Recollections." Yet from childhood some of her nearest and dearest
she had known as actors.

I have spoken first as to people bound by the Golden Rule, and
forbidden therefore to help anybody even to get a living in an evil
way. For the work the theatre does upon yourselves, you know it, if
you will be honest. People answer: "O if it hurt me, of course I would
give it up." Be honest with yourself, and you will come out of that
delusion. You _know_ it does not make love to Christ warmer, or
thoughts of heaven sweeter; or the atmosphere of your everyday life
more wholesome and sound. You know it leaves a restless craving for
excitement,--you know it exalts the world before your eyes; and if you
think a little you will find that, like my poor young friend in her
dancing, you are not edified, not built up, but pulled down. Let me
tell you of one case where the mother was a Church member, and had
prayers regularly every morning with her family, But the command to
_watch_ as well (_i.e._, "keep awake") she had forgotten. And the
desire seized her to see--I will not write the name down here, but it
was one of those foreign importations which have beguiled thousands.
She did not want her son to know of her going, and so went with her
young daughter for escort! But she found her son already there, and
for twenty-eight nights running he was there again. Why not?--if his
mother went once? And as might be expected, the daughter has become
(as people say) "wild for the theatre."

Among the people who loved Mr. Lincoln best, and could best understand
the semi-official way in which he went to the theatre that fatal night,
there was not one, I fancy, who did not feel an added shock at learning
where he was when the messenger came, and who did not wish that he had
been almost anywhere else. Yet why? If the theatre is a proper place
for Christians to enter, it is as good a place as any other to be

"Waiting--waiting--when the Lord shall come."

The only thing I think of mentioned in the Bible that is much like
modern performances on the boards, is the dancing of the daughter of
Herodias before Herod. She worked for hire, she beguiled her audience.
"She pleased the king," and got from him all she asked for. It sounds
very dreadful to you, no doubt, that the prophet's head should have
been