Part 89

5. PAPERS AND MAGAZINES.--Many of the papers and magazines sold at our news stands, and eagerly sought after by young men and boys, are better suited for the parlors of a house of ill-fame than for the eyes of pure-minded youth. A newsdealer who will distribute such vile sheets ought to be dealt with as an educator in vice and crime, an agent of evil, and a recruiting officer of hell and perdition.

6. SENTIMENTAL LITERATURE OF LOW FICTION.--Sentimental literature, whether impure in its subject matter or not, has {422} a direct tendency in the direction of impurity. The stimulation of the emotional nature, the instilling of sentimental ideas into the minds of the young, has a tendency to turn the thoughts into a channel which leads in the direction of the formation of vicious habits.

7. IMPRESSIONS LEFT BY READING QUESTIONABLE LITERATURE.--It is painful to see strong intelligent men and youths reading bad books, or feasting their eyes on filthy pictures, for the practice is sure to affect their personal purity. Impressions will be left which cannot fail to breed a legion of impure thoughts, and in many instances criminal deeds. Thousands of elevator boys, clerks, students, traveling men, and others, patronize the questionable literature counter to an alarming extent.

8. THE NUDE IN ART.--For years there has been a great craze after the nude in art, and the realistic in literature. Many art galleries abound in pictures and statuary which cannot fail to fan the fires of sensualism, unless the thoughts of the visitor are trained to the strictest purity. Why should artists and sculptors persist in shocking the finer sensibilities of old and young of both sexes by crowding upon their view representations of naked human forms in attitudes of luxurious abandon? Public taste may demand it. But let those who have the power endeavor to reform public taste.

9. WIDELY DIFFUSED.--Good men have ever lamented the pernicious influence of a depraved and perverted literature. But such literature has never been so systematically and widely diffused as at the present time. This is owing to two causes, its cheapness and the facility of conveyance.

10. INFLAME THE PASSIONS.--A very large proportion of the works thus put in circulation are of the worst character, tending to corrupt the principles, to inflame the passions, to excite impure desire, and spread a blight over all the powers of the soul. Brothels are recruited from this more than any other source. Those who search the trunks of convicted criminals are almost sure to find in them one or more of these works; and few prisoners who can read at all fail to enumerate among the causes which led them into crime the unhealthy stimulus of this depraved and poisonous literature.

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Startling Sins.

1. NAMELESS CRIMES.--The nameless crimes identified with the hushed-up Sodomite cases; the revolting condition of the school of Sodomy; the revelations of the Divorce Court concerning the condition of what is called national nobility, and upper classes, as well as the unclean spirit which attaches to "society papers," has revealed a condition which is perfectly disgusting.

2. UNFAITHFULNESS.--Unfaithfulness amongst husbands and wives in the upper classes is common and adultery rife everywhere; mistresses are kept in all directions; thousands of these rich men have at least two, and not seldom three establishments.

3. A FRIGHTFUL INCREASE.--Facts which have come to light during the past ten years show a frightful increase in every form of licentiousness; the widely extended area over which whoredom and degrading lust have thrown the glamor of their fascinating toils is simply appalling. {424}

4. MORAL CARNAGE.--We speak against the fearful moral carnage; would to God that some unmistakable manifestation of the wrath of God should come in and put a stop to this huge seed-plot of national demoralization! We are reaping in this disgusting centre the harvest of corruption which has come from the toleration and encouragements given by the legislature, the police, and the magistrates to immorality, vice, and sin; the awful fact is, that we are in the midst of the foul and foetid harvest of lust. Aided by some of the most exalted personages in the land, assisted by thousands of educated and wealthy whoremongers and adulterers, we are reaping also, in individual physical ugliness and deformity, that which has been sown; the puny, ill-formed and mentally weak youths and maidens, men and women, to be seen in large numbers in our principal towns and cities, represent the widespread nature of the curse which has, in a marked manner, impaired the physique, the morality, and the intelligence of the nation.

5. DAILY PRESS.--The daily press has not had the moral courage to say one word; the quality of demoralizing novels such as have been produced from the impure brain and unclean imaginations; the subtle, clever, and fascinating undermining of the white-winged angel of purity by modern sophists, whose prurient and vicious volumes were written to throw a halo of charm and beauty about the brilliant courtesan and the splendid adulteress; the mixing up of lust and love; the making of corrupt passion to stand in the garb of a deep, lasting, and holy affection--these are some of the hideous seedlings which, hidden amid the glamor and fascination of the seeming "angel of light," have to so large an extent corrupted the morality of the country.

6. NIGHTLY EXHIBITIONS.--Some of you know what the nightly exhibitions in these garlanded temples of whorish incentive are. There is the variety theatre, with its disgusting ballet dancing, and its shamelessly indecent photographs exhibited in every direction. What a clear gain to morality it would be if the accursed houses were burnt down, and forbidden by law ever to be re-built or re-opened; the whole scene is designed to act upon and stimulate the lusts and evil passions of corrupt men and women.

7. CONFIDENCE AND EXPOSURE.--I hear some of you say, cannot some influence be brought to bear upon this plague-spot? Will the legislature or congress do nothing? Is the law and moral right to continue to be trodden under foot? Are the magistrates and the police powerless? The truth is the harlots and whoremongers are master of the situation; the moral sense of the legislators, the magistrates, and the {425} police is so low that anything like confidence is at present out of the question.

8. THE SISTERHOOD OF SHAME AND DEATH.--It is enough to make angels weep to see a great mass of America's wealthy and better-class sons full of zeal and on fire with interest in the surging hundreds of the sisterhood of shame and death. Many of these men act as if they were--if they do not believe they are--dogs. No poor hunted dog in the streets was ever tracked by a yelping crowd of curs more than is the fresh girl or chance of a maid in the accursed streets of our large cities. Price is no object, nor parentage, nor home; it is the truth to affirm that hundreds and thousands of well-dressed and educated men come in order to the gratification of their lusts, and to this end they frequent this whole district; they have reached this stage, they are being burned up in this fire of lust; men of whom God says, "Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease sin."

9. LAW MAKERS.--Now should any member of the legislature rise up and testify against this "earthly hell," and speak in defence of the moral manhood and womanhood of the nation, he would be greeted as a fanatic, and laughed down amid derisive cheers; such has been the experience again and again. Therefore attack this great stronghold which for the past thirty years has warred and is warring against our social manhood and womanhood, and constantly undermining the moral life of the nation; against this citadel of licentiousness, this metropolitan centre of crime, and vice, and sin, direct your full blast of righteous and manly indignation.

10. TEMPLES OF LUST.--Here stand the foul and splendid temples of lust, intemperance, and passion, into whose vortex tens of thousands of our sons and daughters are constantly being drawn. Let it be remembered that this whole area represents the most costly conditions, and proves beyond question that an enormous proportion of the wealthy manhood of the nation, and we as citizens sustain, partake, and share in this carnival of death. Is it any wonder that the robust type of godly manhood which used to be found in the legislature, is sadly wanting now, or that the wretched caricatures of manhood which find form and place in such papers as "Truth" and the "World" are accepted as representing "modern society?"

11. PURITANIC MANHOOD.--It is a melancholy fact that by reason of uncleanness, we have almost lost regard for the type of puritanic manhood which in the past held aloft the standard of a chaste and holy life; such men in this day are spoken of as "too slow" as "weak-kneed," and {426} "goody-goody" men. Let me recall that word, the fast and indecently-dressed "things," the animals of easy virtue, the "respectable" courtesans that flirt, chaff, gamble, and waltz with well-known high-class licentious lepers--such is the ideal of womanhood which a large proportion of our large city society accepts, fawns upon, and favors.

12. SHAMEFUL CONDITIONS.--Perhaps one of the most inhuman and shameful conditions of modern fashionable society, both in England and America, is that which wealthy men and women who are married destroy their own children in the embryo stage of being, and become murderers thereby. This is done to prevent what should be one of our chief glories, viz., large and well-developed home and family life.

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The Prostitution of Men.

CAUSE AND REMEDY.

1. EXPOSED YOUTH.--Generally even in the beginning of the period when sexual uneasiness begins to show itself in the boy, he is exposed in schools, institutes, and elsewhere to the temptations of secret vice, which is transmitted from youth to youth, like a contagious corruption, and which in thousands destroys the first germs of virility. Countless numbers of boys are addicted to these vices for years. That they do not in the beginning of nascent puberty proceed to sexual intercourse with women, is generally due to youthful timidity, which dares not reveal its desire, or from want of experience for finding opportunities. The desire is there, for the heart is already corrupted.

2. BOYHOOD TIMIDITY OVERCOME.--Too often a common boy's timidity is overcome by chance or by seduction, which is rarely lacking in great cities where prostitution is flourishing, and thus numbers of boys immediately after the transition period of youth, in accordance with the previous secret practice, accustom themselves to the association with prostitute women, and there young manhood and morals are soon lost forever.

3. MARRIAGE-BED RESOLUTIONS.--Most men of the educated classes enter the marriage-bed with the consciousness of leaving behind them a whole army of prostitutes or seduced women, in whose arms they cooled their passions and spent the vigor of their youth. But with such a past the married man does not at the same time leave behind him its influence on his inclinations. The habit of having a feminine being at his disposal for every rising appetite, and the desire for change inordinately indulged for years, generally make themselves felt again as soon as the honeymoon is over. Marriage will not make a morally corrupt man all at once a good man and a model husband.

4. THE INJUSTICE OF MAN.--Now, although many men are in a certain sense "not worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes" of the commonest woman, much less to "unfasten her girdle," yet they make the most extravagant demands on the feminine sex. Even the greatest debauchee, who has spent his vigor in the arms of a hundred courtesans, will cry out fraud and treachery if he does not receive his newly married bride as an untouched virgin. Even the most dissolute husband will look on his wife as deserving of death if his daily infidelity is only once reciprocated. {428}