ogress, to pray toward the
infinite. To be the servant of God in the task of progress,
and the apostle of God to the people,--such is the law which
regulates growth. All power is duty. Should this power enter
into repose in our age? Should duty shut its eyes? And is
the moment come for art to disarm? Less than ever. Thanks to
1789, the human caravan has reached a high plateau; and, the
horizon being vaster, art has more to do. This is all. To
every widening of the horizon, an enlargement of conscience
corresponds. We have not reached the goal. Concord condensed
into felicity, civilization summed up in harmony,--that is
yet far off. The theatre is a crucible of civilization. It
is a place of human communion. All its phases need to be
studied. It is in the theatre that the public soul is
formed."

The theatre may be made the most potent engine for progress and
reform. We are living in the midst of the most splendid age which has
dawned since humanity first fronted the morning, dimly conscious of
its innate power and the possibilities that lay imbedded in its being;
an era of life, growth, warfare. On the one hand are ancient thought
and prejudice, on the other the inspiration of greater liberty and a
nobler manhood. On the one hand selfishness, sensuality, vulgar
ostentation, avarice, luxury, and moral effeminacy crying, "Art for
art's sake," demanding amusements that will aid in dissipating any
moral strength or deep thought that still lingers in the mind, and
literature that shall enable one to kill time without the slightest
suspicion of intellectual exertion; physical, mental, and moral ennui,
with an assumed lofty contempt for utility. On the other hand we have
the gathering forces of the dawn, demanding "art for progress,"
declaring that beauty must be the handmaid of duty; that art must wait
on justice, liberty, fraternity, nobility, morality, and intellectual
honesty,--in a word the forces in league with light must compel the
beautiful to make radiant the pathway of the future. In the union of
art and utility lies the supreme excellence of "Margaret Fleming," it
deals with one of the most pressing problems of our present
civilization; it is the most powerful plea for an equal standard of
morals for men and women that I have ever heard. This thought, it is
true, like the entire drama, is anything but conventional; it breathes
the spirit of the