DURING one of the very long delays in question Irving and I talked of
many things.
“You were speaking of the waste of food at hotels and restaurants one
day,” Irving remarked. “I am told that at some of the best houses
in Chicago the clean scraps that are left on dishes after each meal
are collected and given to poor families every day. Children with
large baskets call for them. Another class of scraps go to charitable
institutions, more particularly Roman Catholic establishments. These
are the leavings of the carver’s tables in the kitchens. One is glad to
know this, for I, too, have often been struck with the abundance that
is taken away untouched from tables where I have dined; though I have
seen nothing of the public breakfast and dining rooms. It is quite a
system in England, I believe, the collection of food for the humbler
‘homes’ and charities; but one does not see in America any poor of the
abject, poverty-stricken class that is familiar at home. Life to many
must, nevertheless, be a bitter struggle.
“There are many who are well off; thousands who would be happier even
in the most wretched districts of Ireland. An Irish friend of mine, in
New York, said to me only the other day, ‘The worst hut in Connemara is
a palace to some of the tenement-house dens where my countrymen herd
together in New York.’”
“They don’t go West, I am told, as the Germans and Swedes and
Norwegians do. It is a little odd that they do not take full advantage
of the unrestricted freedom of the West, and the gift of land which can
be obtained from the American government. Sixty acres, is it not?”
“Yes, that is the endowment America offers to settlers in some of her
finest territory; and it is true that, as a rule, the Irish do not
become farmers on this side of the Atlantic. They prefer city life,
even with its disabilities. When I was in America one hot summer, two
years ago, children of the poor, who live in the common tenement-houses
down-town in New York, were dying of the heat at the rate of hundreds
a day. In her most crowded alleys London has nothing to compare with
the lodging-houses in the poorer districts of New York for squalor and
misery. But human nature is alike all the world over; more than one
rich man collects heavy rents from these death-traps.”
“Just as a few of our fellow-countrymen in London supplement their
rents by the contributions of infamous tenants. I dare say some of
these hypocrites make speeches against the stage, and go ostentatiously
to church; otherwise they would be found out by their associates.
Religion is, indeed, a useful cloak for these gentry. It is gratifying
to find that in some American cities, that are noted for their church
discipline, the preachers are not afraid to tell their flocks that,
properly used, the stage, as a moral teacher, is not unworthy of
alliance with the pulpit.
“Did Mr. Beecher talk about the morality of the stage, or its relations
to the public?”
“No, but one of the writers for a Brooklyn journal asked me some
questions on the subject. I told him that the world has found out
that they live just like other people, and that, as a rule, they are
observant of all that makes for the sweet sanctities of life, and they
are as readily recognized and welcomed in the social circle as the
members of any other profession. The stage has literally lived down the
rebuke and reproach under which it formerly cowered, and actors and
actresses receive in society, as do the members of other professions,
exactly the treatment which is earned by their personal conduct. He
asked me about the morality of attending the theatre, and I said I
should think the worst performances seen on any of our stages cannot
be so bad as drinking for a corresponding time in what you call here a
bar-room, and what we term a gin-palace. The drinking is usually done
in bad company, and is often accompanied by obscenity. Where drink and
low people come together these things must be. The worst that can come
of stage pandering to the corrupt tastes of its basest patrons cannot
be anything like this, and, as a rule, the stage holds out long against
the invitation to pander; and such invitations, from the publicity and
decorum that attend the whole matter, are neither frequent nor eager.
He informed me that the clergy, as a rule,—he used the term dissenting
clergy, I suppose, as an explanation to me to denote the class who
are not Episcopalians, that I might the better compare them with the
ministers at home,—he told me that they are opposed to theatres.
He asked me what I felt about this. I told him I thought that both
here and in England the clerical profession are becoming more liberal
in their views. Some people think they can live and bring up their
children in such a way as to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and
be saved nine-tenths of the responsibility of self-control. But that
seems to me to be a foolish notion. You must be in the world, though
you need not be of it. The best way for the clergy to make the theatre
better is not to stay away from it, and shun the people who play in
it, but to bring public opinion to bear upon it,—to denounce what is
bad and to encourage what is good. When I was a boy I never went to
the theatre except to see a Shakespearian play, and I endeavored to
make my theatrical experiences not only a source of amusement, but of
instruction.’”