A NEW MENACE TO CHILDREN.
By G.
SECOND to nothing—excepting, perhaps, the strong drink habit—has been the influence of the theater in enervating and degenerating humanity. True, it is the product of so-called "civilization," but its chief encouragement comes from the devotees of sensuous pleasure, from the wealthy and their would-be imitators, and from the vicious. It has contributed, in every age, to the pulling down of otherwise strong nations, but not until great wealth and extreme poverty on the one hand, and consequent idleness and indolence on the other, called for exciting entertainment of some sort. The morally-debilitating influence of the playhouse is illustrated in the fact that professed Christians, who, ten or twenty years ago, would not have dared to enter the theater—because of the example, if for no other reason—are now finding more enjoyment in the playhouse than in the prayer-meeting. Even the professedly good things that are placed on the stage are, at best, but cheap imitations with deteriorating perversions of truth. The only real thing about the drama is its innate viciousness and sinister influence, in spite of its occasional moral and religious pretense. Gilding gold with cheap bronze must ever have the effect of deceiving the public as to the real value of the gold. Imitations are sometimes alluring to the unwary, but they are always deceptive. And the play, like the dance, is ever an excuse for indulging evil associations and attitudes and lusts that would not be tolerated in the social circles of home life. So well does the enemy of righteousness know the evil results of the theater—which is a product of his own inspiration—that he is continually scheming to connect it with childhood as well as with those of mature years. So in giddy Paris, which sets the fashions and the pace for the world, they now have the "children's theater." La Vie Illustrée says: Up to the present our little ones merely had Guignol and the circus as places of amusement, for the entire attention of theater managers was given to the amusement of adults. In consideration of this fact, M. Lucien Klotz recently leased the Theater del'Ambigue, where he intends to inaugurate a series of plays written for and played by children. Thus the enemy of truth would imbue the5minds of the children with a love for the fictitious, gilded side of life, and with a desire to pervert its God-given powers in the shallow art of producing the unreal. With the murderous child-labor system in factories, and the influence of intemperance on every hand, and now the beginning of a "system" of children's theatricals, the pathway of childhood is quite fully beset with obstacles to moral and physical growth.