The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-02-03
EVENING CHAT
BY RUTH CAMERON.

l wish people nowadays were less
afraid of bare facts and more afraid
of illusions.
There is nothing either indecent or
amusing in the great facts of life. But
by circling mysteriously around them,
approaching and retreating, lifting the
veil and then dropping it and running
away. as if there were something to
be afraid of. or laughing, as if there
were something funny in our antics,
we create the illusion of indecency
and amusement.
We are like children playing peek
a-boo. We peek behind our self-erect-
ed screen and then laugh. not because
we see anything funny, but just at
our own antics.
The indecency and the humor are
not in the things themselves, but in
our way of hiding them and then go
ing and taking forbidden peeks at
what we have hidden.
A perfectly naked body is not half
| SO immodest as half-draped body
shrinking and trying to hide behind
its draperies.
once attended the performance of
| Isadore Duncan, the great classic
dancer.
Miss Duncan, as one critic expresses
it, dances with limbs bare and uncor-
seted body. draped only with blowing
gauze, which reveals when she moves
every exquisite emotion she has train
/ GU iCioClL " portray.
| The chorus of the light opera that
l saw the next evening wore a great
many more clothes than she did, but
they were far less modest.
| One of the professors where I went
to college used to tell his classes that
| there was vast difference between
| nudenesS and nakedneSs.
| NudeneSS, he said, was Unconscious
| and unabashed. while nakedness was
conscious and ashamed. The beauti-
full Greek statues, with absolutely no
| draperieS, he explained, were nude
| while many of the later works of art,
| although partially draped, were
naked.
In the same way it seemed to me
that Isadore Duncan. with her scant
draperies, was less naked than the
more extensively clothed, but more
suggestive, ballet dancers. And in the
same way it seems to me that a frank
! ~ faced fact is far more decent than
an allusion however carefully clothed.
| I would infinitely rather a young
daughter of mine went to a play in
which the facts of sex were dealt
with frankly and fearlessly, than to
a play or light opera filed with grace
| fully worded illusions.
| l would rather she read the novel
that has paragraphs in it that polite
society would shudder at than the
book that touches things more grace
fully and lightly but leaves one laugh
ing at sin.
AS a newspaper woman I have
1 sometimes been obliged to discuss
with men, facts and situations that
are not usually the subject of con-
versation between sexes, But if the
men looked me in the eye and spoke
simply and frankly did not mind.
1t was far, far worse to me if g
man who did not understand me
made some suggestive allusion.
1 wish the mothers of the present
day would teach their daughters tt
dislike nothing so much as suggestive.
; ness however carefully worded. and
to shun nothing so much as this sill,
peek-a-boo laughter at things tina
, faced frankly, have nothing in then
to laugh at.
fancy if mothers would cultivate
such an attitude they would find the!
. had created better guard for thei
daughters morals than any chaper
.. onage or watchfulness, however care
! full could possibly be.