The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-01-17
MoRAAIrF N AMUsEmnN rs.
Rev. Addison Moore's Plain Words on
 Novels and Theaters

Novels and Theaters.
 At a largely attended and interesting service at the First Baptist church last evening there was music by the anti phonal choir and solos by Mr. Edgar. Miss Horton and Miss Sigourney, vio- linist. The pastor. Rev. Addison Moore, gave a helpful and practical talk on "Novel Reading and Theater Going" He spoke as follows from the text, For God hath not called us unto unclean- ness" l. Thess., Az.
 It would be an easy thing to be- come indignant over the abuse of amusements by the American public. In the early New England days the frowns of those in authority discour- aged any attempt to Tighten the ser- ousness of life, and laws were enacted to suppress both the novel and the dra- ma as forms of frivolity not to be tol- erated. But the sternness of the Puri- tan fathers passed away and in it's place has come reaction from puritan ical practices, until to-day the public is deluged with appeals to come and be amused by men and women artists whose business it is to furnish what ever the public can be induced to pay for, regardless of consequences to mind or heart, or soul or body, so long as publishers pocket and playwrights' purse receive the golden gains And deluded humanity in it's pursuit of pleasure rushes headlong after the latest fad in amusement circles, all careless of moral ends or immoral teachings.
 Now amusements and recreation should be synonymous terms for all
 LEGITIMATE AMUSEMENT
 is recrea tive; able to re-create whatev- CT faculty is engaged in it's pursuit. Otherwise we abuse instead of amuse our powers of enjoyment, and days soon dawn when appetites become ab- normal and deal death to themselves under form of stimulants If novelist sees fit to drag his hero through the slums of sin, and adorn his heroine with all the vices known to refined society; if he blasphemes the sanctity of home and marriage, and depicts scenes of bestiality. all the world is expected to bow before him as a realist and rush in haste to read his filth. If the billboards of our city display the scenes of the same novel, dramatized in three acts and a few living pictures, the whole population Is expected to throng the theater to witness the result. The nearer such display is to the naked re- alities of life, the greater the crowd it Is supposed to draw. But this is an abasement of both the novel and the theater, due largely to the feverish blood that comes through the veins of a people satiated with the. frivolitfes of pleasure, until the very amusements that ought to rest and elevate are able only to irritate the faculties to which they are addressed.
 There certainly must be some safe middle ground between
 PURITAN AUSTERITY
 and modern indecency; a ground where 1t will be safe to pursue rational in diligence of the love for amusements without fear of reaching either the sin fitness of the one or the somberness of the other. It is foolish to make sweep ing denuncations of fiction and the stage; each case in hand must be deci- ded on it's own merits: but in general it is safe to say that any novel or any play that hasgt9 depend for success upon appeals to ahfmalism or to the il- licit relation of the sexes or to the scantily-cla bodies of it's principal characters, should be dropped into an ignominious oblivion by q discerning and discriminating public.
 When theatrical managers spend money in better class of plays and less money for the many indecencies IL | .yII .. of our cities, we shall be on the road to better things 80 far as the drama is concerned; and when novelists cease to prostitute such powers as they possess to the mere making of gain, we shall begin a new golden age of literature. In the meantime let us give a wide berth to doubtful plays and books, and find our amusement and enjoyment in companionship with the best men and the best books.