602 HOW TO CONTROL THE THEATRE. tion of them and make them safe, by excluding all that is impious and indelicate. The stage will slough off its grossness if its best supporters come from the church, and insist upon decency and morality in the performances. But if the church will not attempt to reform and control popular amusements, then it must keep away from them altogether, and leave them wholly to the publicans and sinners. This is the manifest alternative." About the same time there appeared in the Philadelphia Ledger an article containing these wise words: "Popular tastes are founded on the instincts and affections of the human heart. With such a foundation, they are capable of effecting great good and great evil, just as their tendencies are directed. The wiser course of the moralist would be to avail himself of influences so powerful in their operation, to give them the right direction, and thus have the powerful assistance of the stage in forming virtuous habits, and correcting vicious tastes inimical to good morals. Next to the pulpit and the press, the stage has the greatest capabilities in itself of influencing the masses of society. Why should so powerful an agent be neglected, or why should not its capabilities be cultivated for the good of society? How long would grossness of speech or of thought be tolerated in places where intelligence and refinement are accustomed to resort? How is a good standard of taste created except by the best examples? And where are vice and vulgarity, always more or less allied to brutal instincts, so completely abashed as in the presence of virtue and refinement, or at least of those who in their outward conduct observe all the decencies and proprieties of life? Let respectable and moral people encourage a proper public taste by their presence at our popular amusements. The stage reflects the manners of society, but it is the manners of the society which visit the theatre. It is, therefore, in the power of those A SOUND, PRACTICAL IDEA. 603 who condemn such amusements as gross and immoral, to make them as moral and refined as themselves." All my experience of theatres and managers goes to assure me that this view is practically a sound one. I feel absolutely certain that if it were the common habit of clergymen to go regularly to theatres, and to regularly hiss indecency and immorality there, their influence would be utterly irresistible. Players and managers alike would learn to stand in awe of such a body of determined moral censors, and the effect would be positive and permanent for good. But while clergymen and religionists, as now, stand afar off and denounce the theatre in wholesale terms, actors and managers will reply indignantly, "What do they know about us and our business? They never visit the theatre-many of them never saw a play in their liveshow can they judge of that of which they are confessedly ignorant?" Mr. Lewis Tappan once gave an interesting account of a meeting he attended thirty or forty years ago at the house of Rev. Dr. Channing, of Boston, composed of lawyers, clergymen, physicians and merchants, at which the question was discussed of encouraging the Tremont Theatre, then projected as a reformed place of amusement. Dr. Channing stated that he had long thought that religious persons should interest themselves more than they had done in public amusements, with a view to elevate their character, allure the young men from corrupt pleasures, and make amusements subservient to good morals. The truth probably is, that there is nothing on earth wholly bad, and the true principle for the earnest and candid reformer is to carefully separate the good from the bad, recognizing the former while denouncing the latter, Candor is the great requirement of our moral censors. The stupid twaddle which well-meaning men often utter 604 BANEFUL TWADDLE. is a positive injury to good morals, as well as an insult to intelligence. As a specimen of this baneful twaddle, a writer in the Atlantic Monthly mentions a "Lecture on Popular Amusements," delivered to young men by a celebrated preacher at Indianapolis, in 1846. "With admirable perspicuity, the lecturer places 'vagabonds, fiddlers, fashionable actors, strumpet dancers, dancing horses, and boxing men,' in the same category, and with a naiveté truly refreshing asks his hearers if they ever knew a theatre in which a prayer at the beginning and at the end of the performance would not be considered an intrusion. The only term fit to apply in characterizing such extravagance is 'bigoted intolerance,' and many will think opposition useless and unprofitable. But this tirade represents the opinion of a very large and important part of the community, who think twice before making such a compromise with conscience as to go to the theatre themselves, and who would never dream of permitting such lapses from grace on the part of their children. The feeling is illiberal, and evidence of incomplete culture." In one of the very best and most ably conducted of Boston's religious papers, I once read this silly mess: "Not many months ago a coffin bore from the Tuileries the body of Count Bacciochi, cousin of the Emperor, the first chamberlain and superintendent of the theatres. He had seventeen grand crosses of the highest orders in Europe. He saw all the splendid sights, and heard all the wondrous music of the stage, and by those whose taste was in that direction, he was thought the happiest of men. But alas! not to speak of religion, there was one thing which cost him more hard daily labor than the hardest worker usually performs, and that was the getting of a little rest in sleep." Truly, when one reads such awful examples of the evil effects of theatres, one is forced to say that there is no reply to make to such an argument. SERVING SATAN UNWITTINGLY. 605 Lack of the power of getting sleep, as everybody knows, is a peculiarity unknown to people who never go to theatres,-who never see the "splendid sights" and hear the "wondrous music." I had some acquaintance with Count Bacciochi when I lived in Paris, and I chance to know that he was so blase about these things that he cared about as much for the "splendid sights" and the "wondrous music" of the theatres as a railroad superintendent would care for the "magnificent scenery" he advertised on his road as an inducement to travelers to go that way. So, if for his sins the Count Bacciochi could not sleep, it certainly was not for the sin of being too "happy" over the theatres which his duties made him oversee. It is twaddle like this which makes wicked men laugh and Satan chuckle. Some enthusiastic enemy of the theatre once printed the appalling statement that "It is estimated more money is expended in the United States for theatres than for all the Sabbath-schools in the country." This astounding intelligence drew forth from an irreverent wag the counter statement that "It has been estimated that the cost of washing linen that might just as well be worn two days longer, amounts to enough, in this country, to defray the expenses of the American Board of Foreign Missions. The expenses of buttons on the backs of our coats, where they are of no earthly use, is equal to the support of all our orphan asylums. It is estimated that the value of old boots thrown aside, which might have been worn a day longer, is more than enough to buy flannel night-gowns for every baby in the land. Also, that the cost of every inch on the full shirt collars of our young men is equal to the sum necessary to put a Bible in the hands of every Patagonian giant.” 606 UTTERANCES OF DIVINES. But there have been, and are, many divines who treat this subject with candor,-men who believe that "There have been more in some one play, So fully impressed with this opinion was a Cambridge divine of twenty years ago, that he preached four sermons in the University Church in support of them. Before his day Archbishop Tillotson was not backward to give testimony in their favor, by declaring, "they put some follies and vices out of countenance, which could not be so decently reproved, nor effectually exposed and condemned any other way." Among later utterances from clergymen, one of the most notable is that of Rev. Dr. Bellows, in the New York Academy of Music, a few years ago; and with a few extracts from this able and earnest address, my book will find fitting conclusion. "There is no graver mistake in the world," said Dr. Bellows, "than to imagine that, taking society together, the love of amusement is an overweening passion of humanity. Doubtless it is the ruin of a class. But selfishness, the root of depravity and the mother of human evils, finds its chief outlets and manifestations in the serious and anxious passions of men,-in cupidity, the love of power, envy, jealousy, and malice. Out of the grand desire to appropriate wealth, power, place, or to avoid want, submission, and injury, spring the worst characteristics of society. Falsehood, fraud, violence, anger, cunning, slander, meanness, apathy, vice, and crime, originate in selfishness, which is ordinarily unsocial, stern, sober, laborious, and far as possible from pleasure or diversion. Instead of being self-forgetful, disposed to relaxation, playful, or gay, it is sullen, introspective, tightly girded, |