We are all familiar with the hoary old dictum that the public has no concern with the private lives of the show folk. I must ask leave to differ. I must insist that the public has a most serious interest in the chastity of girls and the fidelity of wives. It is not good for the public that its women be taught by conspicuous example that to her who possesses a single talent, or any number of talents, a life of shame is no bar to public adulation. Every young and inexperienced woman believes herself to have some commanding quality which properly fostered will bring her fame. If she knows that she can do nothing else she thinks that she can write poetry. Is not the father mad who shows his ambitious daughter how little men really care for virtue—how tolerant they are of vice if it be gilded with genius? Worse and most shameful of all, women who clutch away their skirts from contact with some poor devil of a girl who having soiled herself is unable to sing herself out of the mire, will take their pure young girls to see the world worshiping at the feet of a wanton and her paramour because, forsooth, both are gifted and one is beautiful. Let these tender younglings lay well to heart the lesson in charity. Let them not forget that in their parents’ judgment an uncommon physical formation, joined with an exceptional talent, excuses an immoral life. Talent? Beauty alone is all-sufficient. Was not the whole eastern half of this continent, at one time, overhung with clouds of incense burned at the shrine of Beauty unadorned with virtue? Did not the western half give it hospitable welcome and set the wreath upon a brow still reeking of a foreign lecher’s royal kisses and the later salutes of an impossible gambler? She was not even an actress—she could play nothing but the devil. The foundation of her fame and fortune was scandal—scandal lacking even the excuse of love. She had the sagacity to boast of a distinction that she enjoyed in common with a hundred less thrifty dames. She knew the shortest cut to the American heart and pocket. She knew that American fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and lovers would be so base as to come and bring her gold, and that American mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and sweethearts would be bad enough to accompany them, to gaze without a blush at the posings of a simpleton recommended by a prince. She gathered her sheaves and went away. She came back to the re-ripening harvest, hoping that God would postpone the destruction of a corrupt land until she could get out of it.