Vices Sapping Society by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jan 20, 1904

Vices Sapping Society.

By Editor

'Rita' (Mrs. W. Desmond Humphreys), the noted English moralist and essayist, presents a fearful picture of the 'smart set,' the frivolous fashionable leaders of society. Among these she notes gambling, and especially among women, and the worse drug habit, stimulation to goaded, overstrained nerves.

She says (San Francisco Examiner): "I once made a practise of watching the tables at various teashops and restaurants at the hour usually sacred to that 'cup which cheers.' I noted with surprise that for one woman who took tea or ordered it there were at least half-a-dozen men. The woman, if alone or with a very intimate friend, often ordered wine, brandy and soda, or a liqueur of some sort. With the decline of womanly dignity, delicacy, and moral rectitude must come the inevitable degradation of home life and public life. To be ashamed of one's mother or one's wife is, of all fates, the worst that can befall a man, for it saps the very life-blood of his heart and drives him to despair."

And what of all the lower grades of 'society' which follow in the wake of these 'leaders'? Surely we can see evidences of the divine predictions of the degeneracy of man recorded in Holy Writ.