A QUESTION OF MORALS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 8970, 22 April 1890, Page 7

A QUESTION OF MORALS.

One of the gravest accusations made against a theatrical life for girls is that it is the beginning of a life of immorality, and that very few women engaged in it are chaste. No more monstrous, untrue statement has ever been made'; and though it has been widely said and very generally believed, it is a curious fact that no one has brought forward any definite to prove it. A woman need no more be immoral because she is an actress than because she is a housemaid. Every profession has its temptations,and no women gothrough life without being exposed to them, and if we could prove that the stage produced the largest number of the unhappy women who crowd our streets we might then begin to look about for a remedy ; but human nature is the same all the world over, and there are as many immoral women in every class and profession as on the stage. Take two actresses whose names rise to one’s lips at once, an English and an American woman — Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) and Mary Anderson. Are there any men or women who would not be proud to call them wife, mother or sister ? And when we come to a lower rank of actress, to women less well known and distinguished, are there not hundreds of them good, true, honest English "iris, wh'> will become true and honest wives and mothers in their time ? And even_ in a lower rank than they, to the ballet girl or the little tirl who lives at home and helps her mother to keep a decent and happy home together, and who straggles with poverty , and scantiness against the temptations that beset women in the large cities, are they not women England may bo proud to call her daughters and we our sisters ? There is no nobility, no dignity, like the purity of a woman who has gone through all these, struggles.—Mrs Jenne, in the English Illustrated Magazine.