on
the dangers of a theatrical career.

The young heart is fascinated with the thought of danger and temptation.

It is repelled by the commonplace and the ugly.

When you talk to a young mind in a whisper and behind locked doors about
a temptation to be avoided, you but give edge to appetite and curiosity.

When you bring the temptation out into the glare of sunlight, and speak
of it in presence of the whole world, you dispel the illusion.

I will gather together some data concerning the sporting men of America,
and send your son. I will also mail him the sporting papers regularly.
Let him talk and read openly about the subject, and it will lose half
its weird charm.

He, too, should learn to dance, swim, fence, and ride. His bounding
vitality needs directing in wholesome channels. I have never understood
the prejudice against dancing.

To me, it is a form of religious praise of the Creator of youth, health,
vitality, and grace. I have always loved dancing, and the exercise,
besides being eminently beneficial to the health and wonderfully
conducive to grace is, to my thinking, highly moral in its effect. Its
only danger lies in wrong associations, and these seem to threaten young
people who are restricted from the enjoyment in their homes and among
their rightful companions.

I cannot help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hall
of fame, among the "Immortals," for having given the last century her
exquisitely beautiful creations in dancing.

No woman has given us a great epic, or a great painting, or a great
musical composition, but she has given us a great dance-poem, which is
at the same time a painting and a song. Oh, you poor starved, blind
soul, to be deprived of such beautiful spectacles. How I pity you, and
how I pray you to give your children the privileges you have missed
through a belittling idea of your Creator.

Do you fancy God would punish beautiful young Rebecca for dancing, any
sooner than he would blight the willow-tree for waving its graceful arms
to the tune the wind-harps play?

Come up out of the jungles of ignorance and bigotry, my dear cousin,
and live on the hilltops and bring your children with you. For there you
will all find yourself nearer to God and to humanity.

To Mrs. Charles McAllister

_Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne_

I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before you
began your course of action.

You wrote me after y