Page:TheYoungMansGuide.djvu/373

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our own day, convent schools, and colleges conducted by Religious, annually have theatrical entertainments. It is the same with Catholic guilds or societies for young men and young women, under the superintendence of priests. It is an innocent and harmless pleasure to attend such plays as these.

2. Dramas, on the contrary, which are performed by professional actors in the theaters of large cities, are frequently fraught with danger for young people. There the spirit of evil, evening after evening, dwells upon its old theme: the concupiscence of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life. Immorality is not seldom, at least indirectly, inculcated. Everything combines to half intoxicate youthful spectators, to lull to sleep their understanding and their will, and, on the other hand, to excite their imagination to its highest pitch, and to arouse sensuality.

The "American Magazine" for May, 1909, published an article on The Indecent Stage," in which Samuel Hopkins Adams says:

"At one period of the present theatrical season, one fifth of all the dramatic presentments in New York were of dubious character.

"Half a dozen of them were sheer physical brutishness - the appeal to the Yahoo that lurks within all of us, to the beast that we hold in a leash, out of respect to ourselves and due fellows. Sensuality, it is called, in