only when they are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, and sumptuously
lodged and fed; also that they shall, at the end of the play, die of
consumption to the sympathetic tears of the whole audience, or step
into the next room to commit suicide, or at least be turned out by their
protectors and passed on to be "redeemed" by old and faithful lovers who
have adored them in spite of their levities. Naturally, the poorer girls
in the gallery will believe in the beauty, in the exquisite dresses, and
the luxurious living, and will see that there is no real necessity for
the consumption, the suicide, or the ejectment: mere pious forms, all
of them, to save the Censor's face. Even if these purely official
catastrophes carried any conviction, the majority of English girls
remain so poor, so dependent, so well aware that the drudgeries of such
honest work as is within their reach are likely enough to lead them
eventually to lung disease, premature death, and domestic desertion or
brutality, that they would still see reason to prefer the primrose path
to the strait path of virtue, since both, vice at worst and virtue at
best, lead to the same end in poverty and overwork. It is true that the
Board School mistress will tell you that only girls of a certain kind
will reason in this way. But alas! that certain kind turns out on
inquiry to be simply the pretty, dainty kind: that is, the only kind
that gets the chance of acting on such reasoning. Read the first report
of the Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes [Bluebook C
4402, 8d., 1889]; read the Report on Home Industries (sacred word,
Home!) issued by the Women's Industrial Council [Home Industries of
Women in London, 1897, 1s., 12 Buckingham Street, W. C.]; and ask
yourself whether, if the lot in life therein described were your lot
in life, you would not prefer the lot of Cleopatra, of Theodora, of the
Lady of the Camellias, of Mrs Tanqueray, of Zaza, of Iris. If you can
go deep enough into things to be able to say no, how many ignorant
half-starved girls will believe you are speaking sincerely? To them the