Going the other evening to see "Rip Van Winkle," the old question of
its moral naturally came up, and Portia warmly asserted that it was
shameful to bring young children to see a play in which the exquisite
skill of Jefferson threw a glamour upon the sorriest vice.

"See," she said, "the earnest, tearful interest with which these boys
and girls near us hang upon the story. The charm to them of the scene
and of the acting is indescribable. Do you suppose they can escape the
effect? All their sympathy is kindled for the good-natured and
good-for-nothing reprobate, and when Gretchen turns him out into the
night and the storm, they cannot help feeling that it is she, not he,
who has ruined the home, and that the drunken vagabond, who has just
made his endearments the cover of deception, is really the victim of a
virago. And when he returns, old and decrepit, and, we might hope,
purged of that fatal appetite which has worked all the woe, it is his
old victim, the woman whose youth his evil habits ruined, and who, in
consequence of those habits was driven into the power of the
tormentor, Derrick von Beekman, who hands him 'the cup that shall be
death in tasting,' as if it were she, and not he, who had been
properly chastened and converted from the fatal error of supposing
that drunkenness is not a good thing.

"No, no," said Portia, indignantly and eloquently, raising her voice
to that degree that the Easy Chair feared to hear the appalling "'sh!
'sh!" of the disturbed neighbors; "it is a grossly immoral spectacle,
and the subtler and more fascinating the genius of Mr. Jefferson in
the representation, the more deadly is the effect."

The drop had just fallen, and the scene on the mountains was about to