brought into the Juvenile Court after a night spent weeping in the
cellar of her home because she had stolen a mass of artificial flowers
with which to trim a hat. She stated that she had taken the flowers
because she was afraid of losing the attention of a young man whom she
had heard say that "a girl has to be dressy if she expects to be
seen." This young man was the only one who had ever taken her to the
theater and if he failed her, she was sure that she would never go
again, and she sobbed out incoherently that she "couldn't live at all
without it." Apparently the blankness and grayness of life itself had
been broken for her only by the portrayal of a different world.

One boy whom I had known from babyhood began to take money from his
mother from the time he was seven years old, and after he was ten she
regularly gave him money for the play Saturday evening. However, the
Saturday performance, "starting him off like," he always went twice
again on Sunday, procuring the money in all sorts of illicit ways.
Practically all of his earnings after he was fourteen were spent in
this way to satisfy the insatiable desire to know of the great
adventures of the wide world which the more fortunate boy takes out in
reading Homer and Stevenson.

In talking with his mother, I was reminded of my experience one Sunday
afternoon in Russia when the employees of a large factory were seated
in an open-air theater, watching with breathless interest the
presentation of folk stories. I was told that troupes of actors went
from one manufacturing establishment to another presenting the simple
elements of history and literature to the illiterate employees. This
tendency to slake the thirst for adventure by viewing the drama is, of
course, but a blind and primitive effort in the direction of culture,
for "he who makes himself its vessel and bearer thereby acquires a