p. 31 | Beware of the World! by Timothy Titcomb

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 26, 1865

Beware of the World!

By Timothy Titcomb

I NEVER heard of an American girl going abroad to study music, for the purpose of fitting herself for a public musical career, without a pang. A musical education, an introduction to public musical life, and a few years of that life, are almost certain ruin for any woman. Some escape this ruin, it is true, but there are temptations laid for every step of their life. They find their success in the hands of men who demand more than money for wages. They find their personal charms set over against the personal charms of others. Their whole life is filled with rivalries and jealousies. They find themselves constantly thrown into intimate association on the stage with men who subject themselves to no Christian restraint—who can hardly be said to have had a Christian education. They are constantly acting in operas, the whole dramatic relish of which is found in equivocal situations, or openly licentious revelations. In such circumstances as these, a woman must be a marvel of modesty and a miracle of grace to escape contamination. I do not believe there is a woman in the world who ever came out of a public musical career as good a woman as she entered it. She may have escaped with an untarnished name; she may have preserved her standing in society, or even heightened it; but in her inmost soul she knows that the pure spirit of her girlhood is gone.—TIMOTHY TITCOMB, in Sabbath Recorder.