so fruitlessly in its behalf, suggested a course of lectures on more popular subjects, by some of the favorite lecturers, as a possibly successful rival to the liquor-shops. "No," said the good pastor, with a severe shake of the head: "that would only be replacing one excitement by another, and this thirst for excitement is the root of the evil." "Can you think of nothing that your people, your young men, would enjoy?" asked the friend. "Oh!" replied the poor pastor, with almost a groan of despair, "my people seem really to like nothing but dancing."

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Well, then, in the name of common-sense, let them dance," was the reply. "Their sisters and their sisters' friends are better company for the young men than the billiard-rooms afford; and, if that is the only way to get at them, let's all dance together till we can teach them to like something else."

"No, no!" sighed the conscientious shepherd of the sheep. "I can never, never bring myself to approve of dancing." Meantime, the dram-shops flourished and increased. [Fact.]

This reminiscence leads to the consideration of a common reason for the frequent failure of Christian reformers in dealing with the subject of amusements; namely, an almost unpardonable want of discrimination of judgment. They so often take the attitude of the man who owned a field in which was a dangerous pitfall, in consequence of which he fenced it all in, and put up at each corner a formidable sign, warning people that it was "dangerous" to cross that field. But the people very much wanted to cross just there: it was convenient and pleasant, and they did not believe that it was dangerous. So they tried it for themselves, and crossed and recrossed in perfect safety, until one dark night an unwary wanderer, following the example of those about him, ventured across, and he fell into the pit and was miserably destroyed. Thus, the owner of the field failed utterly of his object. In calling the whole field "dangerous," he had not in the least pointed out where the danger was.

Now, it is quite true that there are pitfalls in the ball

room, but they are not what or where many people suppose them to be. Most parents would rejoice to see a radical change in the modern style of dancing, with its late hours and overdressing, and would also hail the day when that most inelegant of all dances, known in America as "The German," should be abolished and banished from our midst, together with its inevitably vulgarizing influences on society, chief of which is the conspicuousness given to young ladies, equally through favor or neglect, and also its apparent tendency to destroy all knightly, chivalrous sentiment in the young American gentleman of to-day, who perhaps might face a cannon's mouth, but cannot take the risk of being "bored for a couple of hours." Now there is a way to reform all this; and it is by parents making themselves their children's companions, and by their presence and allpowerful influence, here as elsewhere (when exerted in earnest and in season), carrying change and reform wherever there is the need. This done, how many people see any real harm in dancing, the most natural as it is the most fascinating of all amusements to the young, combining as it does the exhilaration of music and of physical exercise, enjoyed alike by the lamb in the field and the young girl or boy in the parlor, and as innocently by one as the other? Did I say that parents COULD make dancing what it should be? Nay, more, have they a right to neglect the duty? Here is a means of giving their children one innocent amusement which is sure to be acceptable. Dare they throw away such a safeguard against the allurement of amusements which are not innocent? It is true that there are pitfalls in the ball-room; but they are chiefly such as are found in many other scenes of life,- namely, the temptation to selfseeking, love of display, and a thirst for and selfish absorption in one's own pleasure, with sometimes a cruel disregard to that of others. These are the worst dangers I have observed, after thirty years' acquaintance with this form of recreation. These are things which entire banishment from the ball-room will never cure, since the same pitfalls are not absent, alas! from Dorcas societies, parish parties,

town-meetings, or mercantile transactions, while acts of unselfishness and kind consideration are by no means unknown in the majority of ball-rooms.

It is worthy of note, also, that almost universal as is the taste for dancing, unlike many of the favorite pleasures of youth, it is the one earliest outgrown.

Of the incidental possible dangers of card-playing, there is little or no difference of opinion; but here, as elsewhere, who believes that contamination is inherent in the game or the cards? The gambling spirit has been found to exist, at its very worst, at the stock exchange, and with a startling frequency in the breasts of church-members, of whom it may safely be believed that they have never played a game of cards in their lives. For one, I should consider that boy most safe to whom cards were not a forbidden and hence an alluring pleasure, and who had learned, while playing games with an honorable father, that nothing short of the most scrupulous fair dealing as well as the most courteous self-control was to be tolerated among decent men.

Precisely in this way, some of the most precious lessons of life are learned, whose impressiveness is immeasurably increased by the fact that they are not recognized as lessons at all, while they are indelibly stamped upon the character by the incalculable force of example.

Indiscriminate condemnation is as unwise here as elsewhere, because as unfair, since along with it is apt to go a certain lack of honesty, unconscious though it be.

On this subject, the eloquent pen of Rev. Phillips Brooks has lately been at work with its usual force. In a wellknown Princeton Review article, he says (in another connection), "Nothing is more mistaken than to teach children what we have ceased to believe ourselves." "A most dangerous experiment," he calls it; and he warns such as pursue this course that "they know very little about the certain workings of the human heart, and have no real faith in truth itself." "Men find that you are playing with them, and will not believe you when you come in earnest."

The inconsistency of some branches of the Church in

dealing with this matter of amusements is a constant scandal in the mouth of the scoffer. "Church parlors," wherein dancing is never allowed, are given up to romping games of very doubtful propriety. Congregations which would frown upon theatre-going arrange elaborate tableaux and dialogues, hereby often sowing the seeds of vanity and love of display of the most objectionable kind, together with musical and scenic effects, as approved aids to various church enterprises, to say nothing of the wholesale lottery system which underlies the ordinary church fair. There is no doubt that through this inconsistency the Church and church-members have lost power and influence. The more's the pity! They have cried, "Wolf!" when there was no wolf. Men have found out that they were "playing with them, and would not believe them when they came in earnest."

What has been said of dancing and cards can certainly be said with equal truth of most other popular amusements, certainly of the theatre. There is much room for improvement here.

A play occupied a Boston stage during a part of last winter ("Engaged") which, while it was free from any of the coarser forms of immorality, seemed to some people thoroughly demoralizing in its tendency, its whole tone being one continual scoff at most things which we have learned to revere. In it, the young were taught, in effect, with much wit and dramatic cleverness, that no such things as truth, honor, disinterestedness, and the like, are to be looked for in this world; and great pleasure seemed to be found in the discovery of this dreary fact, the whole horror culminating in a confidential conversation between a father and daughter, represented as a lady and gentleman, vying with each other in a display of nauseating treachery, meanness, and vulgarity.

This was received for weeks by admiring audiences in critical Boston with rapturous applause.

Am I told that this was satire, and that it is my own dulness which prevents an appreciation of it? One of the

great writers of the age has lately reminded us, on the authority of a brilliant French author, that it is not a proof of intellectual acumen to be able to see everything in a ridiculous light; and I gladly enroll myself in her company of persons who are suffering "under the growing demand upon them to laugh when they have no other reason than the peril of being taken for dullards," and who stand sadly in need of that "courage" of which she speaks, "to say that they object to the theatrical spoiling, for themselves and their children, of all affecting themes, all the grander deeds and aims of men, by burlesquing associations." Satire's only excuse for being is that it shall reform an evil. It is like those poisons which some daring physicians use as tonics: in careful hands, safe though bitter, reviving, waking, and toning up the sluggish powers; but, in the reckless hands of quacks and charlatans, benumbing, paralyzing, deadly. The young of this age have not that overstock of reverence, sentiment, or sensitiveness of conscience which can stand the "heroic treatment" of too frequent burlesquing of these (once considered) graces of the human heart. When arrant worldliness is applauded and a skilful lie is looked upon as a good joke, a long step has been taken toward that stand-point, familiar to this age and land, from which money takes the place of respectability, smartness is a substitute for honesty, and amusement is an object of life, at whatever cost.

"We have been severely enough taught," says the eminent English author above quoted, "that our civilization, considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril, without the spiritual police of sentiments and ideal feelings. And it is this invisible police which we have need, as a community, to strive to maintain in efficient force.

Just here is the pith of our whole subject. If it is true that the material safety and prosperity of a civilization depend upon the invisible police of ideal (i.e., right) feelings and sentiments, what is to be said, when we look at the subject from the point of view of the Christian moralist?

Is there any other known force strong enough to keep