The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1879-03-28
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THE STAGE.
MISS ANNA z. D1ck1ssoS's DEFENSE OF IT.
Philadelphia Record.

Philadelphia Record.
The Academy OF Music was filled on
Thursday night to repletion with brilliant
audience, attracted by the announcement
that Miss Anna e. Dickinson would de-
liver her lecture ON "The Stage" Miss
Dickinson began by disclaiming that she
haG ever fersaken The platform. She had
simply shut her mouth for the time she
had nothing to say that deserved the ears
and time of our people. The speaker
then entered upon the defense of the stage.
speaking of its charms, its influences, and
of the various phases of human nature por-
trayed before the feotlights. In conelu
sion, she said:
Take the men and women of genius,
the actors who have the greatest power
and influence ON their times. What of
them? Has not, in majority of lnstan-
ces, the life of this man or this woman
been blasted by the life of the stage? No.
We are putting careless fingers upon one
of the greatest mysteries, venture TO
say, of our common humanity, and that is
is the strange, complex, sorrowfnl, pitiful
problem of life. Where you would find
the same nature elsewhere you would find
it In almost every instance with the Same
result, at the bar, in the editorial chair, in
any profession or art, you may find this
nature not calm, equable, evenly poised,
but hunted, driven, tempest-tossed, filed
with heats and chills, with Indifference and
with impassioned ardor, with heights and
depths OF which the ordinary nature knows
and can can conceive nothing, with an
eternal desire for rest, and ceaseless
restlessness, with an eternal struggle and
an eternal longing for peace. You take
this nature, you take some of these great
lights of the stage, I ask you to run down
the record Of life, looking at the heart and
soul, to the complex and ouriously unbal-
anced nature back of it; read the story and
see whether this man or that should be
condemned. Just such men as some who
demned this man and his life are only
too glad to gather about him he shonld
have rest and repose to trim the lamp that
is burning his life aways that they may
have d few short hours of illumination, TO
stir the embers that are burning and con-
suning him, body and soul, and that they
may have their sluggish currents warmed
for q few brief hours. Gay, brilliant,
dashing, they want to spur up this sinking
energy that they may have the same de-
light that multitudes have In watching
the mad sweep of courssrs over the
( race-course, and then 60 home
and say, tsI thank God am not as
that man = and bye-and-bye TO say,
aWhat shame, what an infamy, for that
men with that genius, who ought to walk
with head among the stars and step with
stride III giant, to grovei ia the mire and
wander blindly down to deaths domain =
II fAppiauseI Because this is so, what I
have tried poorly and lamely to set forth,
because In the theatre the poor for mo-
ment can be rich, the idle stirred, the in
dolent moved, the ignorant instructed, be-
cause there 10 taught the wisdom that comes
through pleasure because Of this : ash
the Intelligent and thoughtful considera-
tion of these who love the Gheatre, but Of
those who have turned their eyes away
from ii to do for ii their best, as down TO
this day ii has tried TO do. honestly
think, for its constituency its best renaem-
sbering that the tremeious truth Of human
ity and of good are taught, not simply
through the burning brush, tlrongh the
thunders of Sinai, but through tho still,
, small voices 81 pleasure, sweetness and hap
piness and Sunshine, striking athwart and
through humanity.