Dr. Stiggins:
tion; a convention of decency and seemliness it is true, but still a convention and not an eternal law. An African woman, clad in a bead girdle, may be, and very likely is, as modest, or much more modest, than an Englishwoman dressed for a great dinner according to the latest dictates of the prevailing fashion. Clothes, I say, are a convention and a convention that affects the body only; how much more important is the clothing of the mind? Conceive the effect on the average young man and woman, while this heroine of the play is being tempted and approached before them; are not the priceless veils of maiden modesty torn, not from the body of the person on the stage, but from the souls of those who gaze at this awful spectacle?
I suppose you will ask me if I expect the writers of such things to address themselves exclusively to the Young Person—if I intend to tie their soaring genius to the pinafores of my children. I say in answer to that query, that it is not I who chose the medium through which these
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