How many parents take their children's amusement seriously, as they take their own, and are concerned that these shall be, as they can be made, free from all that is vulgar and unclean? If the well-to-do, who might have other recreations, are given to the motion picture, is it to be wondered at that in the poorer quarters of New York, if a child be too small to be tortured by being kept at the side of its parents throughout a motion picture performance, it may be checked in its go-cart as one would check an umbrella. There is an electric indicator on the side of the screen which flashes the check-number to inform parents when their child is in real or fancied distress. A writer in the _Outlook_, May 19, 1915, deals with the vulgarizing of American children and particularly the vulgarizing and corrupting power of the movies. He commented editorially, as I have done elsewhere, on the extraordinary absence of parental care for the minds of children in curious contradiction to the supersedulous care of the body: "Many influences are at work to vulgarize American children, and little is done by many parents to protect the mental health of their children. Neither time nor money is spared to preserve them in vigor and strength, to protect them from contamination. Meanwhile, those minds are the prey of a great many influences, which, if not actually evil, are vulgarizing. What is going on is not so much the corruption of young people in America as their vulgarization." Parents are not less vulgarized, but the awakening and shock come when children are grown and are found to show the effects of what was innocent amusement, of what proves to have been deeply corrupting and degrading to the spirit. But it is not enough for parents to censor the theatres frequented by their children and when they can to debar them from attendance at disgustingly "sexy" plays. It is their business as far as they can to cultivate in their children the love of the best in letters and in the arts. It is not enough to call a halt to the pleasure-madness of our children; it is needful that their recreations be guided into wholesome and creative channels. Happily books and pictures and, though less so, music, are accessible to all, and it remains true that we needs must love the highest when we see or hear it. Intellectual companionship is a primal necessity in the home contacts. Partially because of the craze for visible and audible entertainment, we have lost the habit of reading. Why trouble to plough for ten or twelve hours through a volume when one may look upon its contents picturized within the duration of an evening's performance at the theatre and in addition the "evil of solitariness" be avoided?