The oasis., 1897-01-23
MIR. MOODY AND "aR1 D

tltN ti Wldl io ihiitb uiNhtAh dit, and his latest utterance was in New York City, last Sunday, when in Car negie hall he addressed an immense audience. In part he said:
 "l don't know anything better for New York than all the newspapers that are vie and print lewd pictures should be placed in huge pile iu Fifth avenue and burned up. am tired of that thing called art We are decaying under the polite name of art. We are going in the way of NJ neyeh, Babylon and Rome. Burn up the Sunday newspapers and these 'liy- lng-pictureS. They are a nice thing for woman to have in her house, aren't they? Are those lewd things that are hung on the walls of our museums and iu the mansions in Fifth avenue arts It would be overlooked in lower New York, they say. 1 tell you that the people in the lower parts of the city are every bit as good as those in Fifth avenue. I have re- ceived letters c0ndemning me for say ing things about that woman who came here from Paris to sing vile songs. l meant what l said, and mean them now. Burn those vile things up. say, even if it burns up all New York. And this French w0- man says that do not know anything about art, and people say l must say nothing against art, but despise those things called art that degrade men and drag women down.
 Everyone with the moral sense Of civilized, Christian man or woman N Ill surely commend the uttcrances of Mir Moody An art which depicts on canvass, or in stone. or by his trionic representation what cannot be permitted by living, breathing, indi- vidual at any time or any place can not but be debasing But a couple of weeks ago the country was treated to sensational telegraphic account of how a New York police captain broke up swell dinner in which actresses had been hired to dance in a state of nudity. Yet many of the very people who commend the act of the police officer have on the walls of their man. slons life sized and lifelikc paintings of nude women in poses and attitudes fully as lasciyious as any taken by the lewd dancing women at the now fam ous Sherry dinner. According to the canons of polite society one is permis- sible because it is art" while the other is prohibited because lewd and lasciyious. The same way with the French woman whom Mir. Moody cri- ticises. She stands on the stage in public and with suggestive leer and lasciyious pose sings of things which would not be permitted to be shown upon the same stage, and she calls 1t .'art.n The crowd Of lecherous old bucks who flock to hear her don't call it that. They frankly ''call spade spade" and admit they go to see be- cause it is "a spade. 1t is only the goody goody people who feel within the affiliations of their own lascie- fousness but dent want to admit 1t. who dignlfy such prurience and pull chritude with the high sounding ap- pelation of "art." Your old rounder goes to see the belly dance" and to hear Yyette Guilbcrt sing her bawdy songs because he is nasty and knows it, and is not ashamed to admit that he likes to be so. But the goody goody scion of polite deprayity follows him because of the art" in the per torrance. Out upon such ret.
 And what a row was raised by de- voices of tart" because the trustees of the Boston public library at first re- fused to set up the bronze statue of "Baccbante," and bow they were ridi- culed until 1t was put in the public place where the deyotees of