Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/132

 exerted upon his classmates; we cannot, above all, because we must hinder him from exerting the same influence upon his remaining classmates. We cannot ignore the charge - and this, gentlemen, is possibly the weightiest of all - on any pretext concerning a ruined career, because it is our duty to protect ourselves from an epidemic of suicide similar to that which has broken out recently in various grammar schools, and which until to-day has mocked all attempts of the teachers to shackle it by any means known to advanced education. . . . We see ourselves under the necessity of judging the guilt-laden that we may not be judged guilty ourselves...Are you the author of this obscene manuscript? Melchior. Yes -I request you, sir, to show me anything obscene in it. Sonnenstich. You have as little respect for the dignity of your assembled teachers as you have a proper appreciation of mankind's innate sense of shame which belongs to a moral world.

Melchior's mother, a modern type, has greater faith in her child than in school education. But even she cannot hold out against the pressure of public opinion; still less against the father of Melchior, a firm believer in authority and discipline.

Herr Gabor. Anyone who can write what Melchior wrote must be rotten to the core of his being. The mark is plain. A half-healthy nature wouldn't do such a thing. None of us are saints. Each of us wanders from