Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/66

Counter-Currents austere virtues which no cajolery can disguise. The more it is amused, the more it assumes amusement to be its due; and this assumption receives the support and encouragement of those whose experience must have taught them its perils.

Miss Jane Addams, in her careful study of the Chicago streets, speaks of the "pleasure-loving girl who demands that each evening shall bring her some measure of recreation." Miss Addams admits that such a girl is beset by nightly dangers, but does not appear to think her attitude an unnatural or an unreasonable one. A very able and intelligent woman who has worked hard for the establishment of decently conducted dance-halls in New York,—dance-halls sorely needed to supplant the vicious places of entertainment where drink and degradation walk hand in hand,—was asked at a public meeting whether the girls for whose welfare she was pleading never 50