The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets | Page 3

the
flat was too little and too stuffy to stay in." In the difficult rôle of elder
brother, he had done his best, stating that he had taken her "to all the
missions in the neighborhood, that she had had a chance to listen to
some awful good sermons and to some elegant hymns, but that some
way she did not seem to care for the society of the best Christian
people." The little sister reddened painfully under this cruel indictment
and could offer no word of excuse, but a curious thing happened to me.
Perhaps it was the phrase "the best Christian people," perhaps it was the
delicate color of her flushing cheeks and her swimming eyes, but
certain it is, that instantly and vividly there appeared to my mind the
delicately tinted piece of wall in a Roman catacomb where the early
Christians, through a dozen devices of spring flowers, skipping lambs
and a shepherd tenderly guiding the young, had indelibly written down
that the Christian message is one of inexpressible joy. Who is
responsible for forgetting this message delivered by the "best Christian
people" two thousand years ago? Who is to blame that the lambs, the

little ewe lambs, have been so caught upon the brambles?
But quite as the modern city wastes this most valuable moment in the
life of the girl, and drives into all sorts of absurd and obscure
expressions her love and yearning towards the world in which she
forecasts her destiny, so it often drives the boy into gambling and
drinking in order to find his adventure.
Of Lincoln's enlistment of two and a half million soldiers, a very large
number were under twenty-one, some of them under eighteen, and still
others were mere children under fifteen. Even in those stirring times
when patriotism and high resolve were at the flood, no one responded
as did "the boys," and the great soul who yearned over them, who
refused to shoot the sentinels who slept the sleep of childhood, knew,
as no one else knew, the precious glowing stuff of which his army was
made. But what of the millions of boys who are now searching for
adventurous action, longing to fulfil the same high purpose?
One of the most pathetic sights in the public dance halls of Chicago is
the number of young men, obviously honest young fellows from the
country, who stand about vainly hoping to make the acquaintance of
some "nice girl." They look eagerly up and down the rows of girls,
many of whom are drawn to the hall by the same keen desire for
pleasure and social intercourse which the lonely young men themselves
feel.
One Sunday night at twelve o'clock I had occasion to go into a large
public dance hall. As I was standing by the rail looking for the girl I
had come to find, a young man approached me and quite simply asked
me to introduce him to some "nice girl," saying that he did not know
any one there. On my replying that a public dance hall was not the best
place in which to look for a nice girl, he said: "But I don't know any
other place where there is a chance to meet any kind of a girl. I'm
awfully lonesome since I came to Chicago." And then he added rather
defiantly: "Some nice girls do come here! It's one of the best halls in
town." He was voicing the "bitter loneliness" that many city men
remember to have experienced during the first years after they had
"come up to town." Occasionally the right sort of man and girl meet

each other in these dance halls and the romance with such a tawdry
beginning ends happily and respectably. But, unfortunately, mingled
with the respectable young men seeking to form the acquaintance of
young women through the only channel which is available to them, are
many young fellows of evil purpose, and among the girls who have left
their lonely boarding houses or rigid homes for a "little fling" are
likewise women who openly desire to make money from the young
men whom they meet, and back of it all is the desire to profit by the
sale of intoxicating and "doctored" drinks.
Perhaps never before have the pleasures of the young and mature
become so definitely separated as in the modern city. The public dance
halls filled with frivolous and irresponsible young people in a feverish
search for pleasure, are but a sorry substitute for the old dances on the
village green in which all of the older people of the village participated.
Chaperonage was not then a social duty but natural and inevitable, and
the whole courtship period was guarded by the conventions and
restraint which were taken as a matter