To me it has always been of great interest to watch how the type of writer, and the type of play changed and progressed with the change in the character and the standards of our audiences. Only the superficial observer will claim superiority in the plays of 1890 to the plays of 1910, and since 1910 we have had an almost steady growth in the art of the serious dramatist, a growth so important that beside it the smudges of filth spilled by a few unimportant scribblers may very easily be forgotten. The question of dirt in the theater in any case is no longer of any real importance. The extreme frankness of modern society, the freedom with which all sorts of questions are discussed in the home and in all walks of life, has acted as a complete disinfectant. It was an extremely easy thing to shock small coins out of a Puritan community but the man who has skill enough to successfully pander to an over-sophisticated audience usually has sense enough to use that skill to better advantage. The censor in the end will disappear, not wholly because he is no longer needed but because he will be no longer understood. My grandfather and his family walked to church every Sunday because to drive on the Lord’s Day was a sin. I walk four miles around a golf course every Sunday, and it is probable that my moral standards are as high as his were. If I am sure of anything at all, I am sure that I am not my brother’s keeper, and, deeply as I resent dirt for dirt’s sake in the theater, I know that the way to end it is not by allowing some one person or some group of persons to set up their own moral or ethical standard and compel the rest of the world to abide by it. The professional moralist soon standardizes his own beliefs just as the professional politician does, and he never has and never can properly represent the shifting taste of the majority. Just what may properly be discussed on the stage or in society varies so greatly with the passing moods of the times that any fixed and rigid rules soon become fixed and rigid absurdities. I distinctly recall the extraordinary difficulty my mother had some forty odd years ago in delicately conveying to us the news that our old dog was soon to have an increase in her family, and in those days a female dog was called a female dog, economized speech being at that time considered to be of less importance than elegance.