or any subject like it. That prostitution exists and flourishes: that prostitutes sometimes suffer terribly: that their existence, and often diseased condition, is a terrible menace to public health: that the regulation and, as far as humanly possible, the extirpation of that dreadful profession is a crying need—all that and much more relative to the subject is known, and widely known. But the public discussion of those subjects, in as far as public discussion of them is necessary, concerns social philosophers,-organizations such as Dr. Prince A. Morrow's "Society for Sanitation and Moral Prophylaxis"-doctors, legislators,-persons who bear the burden and responsibility of government and who are competent to instruct and discuss them under the right conditions and in the right way. The theatrical audience is composed largely of young persons, many of them girls, at an age when they are exceptionally sensitive to impressions. It is not prudishness: it is knowledge of the world and common sense that would bar anything and everything tending to cause and promote indiscriminate notice and discussion among young persons, or in a promiscuous assemblage (such as always convenes in a theatre), of such themes as "the social evil" and its consequences. No right-minded, well-bred person introduces an indelicate, not to say foul, subject for conversation in a drawing-room. The introduction of such a subject would be consideredand justly so an insult: and there is no more justifica

tion for insulting people in a theatre than there would be for insulting them in a parlor. The public does not attend the theatre for the purpose of obtaining information and "views" about evil, its cause or its cure. The notion that social evils can be corrected by writing plays about them is little better than idiotic.

But Mr. Shaw writes like a charlatan whose stock in trade is paradox. In the same communication from which his statement above quoted is taken he says that: "There are people (sic) with whom you can discuss such subjects, and people (sic) to whom you cannot mention them. The patrons of the prostitutes form the main body of the latter, and the women who are engaged in rescuing women are the backbone of the former. Get the rescuers into the theatre, and keep the patrons out. . . ."

That is, exclude the persons to whom the "moral lesson" of his play (if it had one, which it has not) should be addressed (meaning the very class that teachers of theatrical "lessons" might, perhaps, improve --if anybody could be improved by the "frightful example"), and "get into the theatre" the reformers engaged in the charitable work of trying to reclaim degraded women, the reformers (typified at their best by such a public benefactor as Jane Addams), who by personal observation and contact are familiar with the shocking details of the subject, and who know far more about it than Mr. Shaw does, and do not require infor

mation from him or anybody else: and then, having got those reformers in, affront them by a flippant, irrelevant "study" of the terrible condition they are seeking to correct-having charged them from fifty cents to $2, or more, for the affront, and thus obtained handsome royalties for a crack-brained, mischief-making English-Irish socialist!

Miss Mary Shaw, who has shown herself not only willing but eager to be identified as the representative of Mrs. Warren and as a moving spirit in promoting its public presentation, may be entirely honest in her conviction, expressed in print, that "the central idea is the poignant pathos of a motherhood that is not legitimate, but is as loving and protective as a legitimate one," and that the presentation of the play is for the public good. That is no reason why persons of sense and sound judgment should adopt her erroneous view— which is an insult to honest womanhood. The order of mind that can suppose a fortuitous, illegitimate motherhood to be "as loving and protective" as that which is the purest and most sacred relation of society is not likely to command profound respect. Whatever may be Miss Shaw's beliefs, it is well to recall that "Mrs. Warren's Profession" was revived, after its single New York performance, for her use, by Mr. Al. H. Woods, the same "manager" who brought forth "The Girl in the Taxi," "The Girl with the Whooping Cough," and "Get Busy with Emily,"-all of which

were suppressed for indecency, and "The Narrow Path," which was driven from the New York Stage, after one performance, by universal denunciation; because that fact furnishes a significant denotement of the actual motive which underlay the desire to "teach lessons" with "Mrs. Warren's Profession." "By their fruits ye shall know them."

XV.

"OLIVER TWIST"

THE marvellous mind of Charles Dickens, remarkable for many diverse faculties and attributes, was especially remarkable for a prodigious, overwhelming vitality, and when he read from his own works that vitality was poured into his Readings as abundantly as it had been poured into the works themselves. His most charming readings were those which introduced Dr. Marigold and Mrs. Gamp. I thought when hearing them that he most enjoyed his rendering of scenes from "Martin Chuzzlewit" and "The Pickwick Papers," but I know that he highly valued his impersonations,-for such they were, of leading characters in "Oliver Twist." He liked melodrama, and as a platform actor he took great pains to impersonate Sikes, Nancy, and Fagin. His son Charles, who visited America in 1888, and whom it was my privilege to number among my friends, told me that his father's physicians earnestly warned him against the tremendous efforts he made as a reader, and especially against the violent exertions incident to his reading from "Oliver Twist." "On one occasion," so the younger Dickens continued, "while we were living