e, shadow, and mystery, they face the
existence of people, places, costumes, utterly novel. Immigrants are
prodded by these swords of darkness and light to guess at the meaning of
the catch-phrases and headlines that punctuate the play. They strain to
hear their neighbors whisper or spell them out.

The photoplays have done something to reunite the lower-class families.
No longer is the fire-escape the only summer resort for big and little
folks. Here is more fancy and whim than ever before blessed a hot night.
Here, under the wind of an electric fan, they witness everything, from a
burial in Westminster to the birthday parade of the ruler of the land of
Swat.

The usual saloon equipment to delight the eye is one so-called "leg"
picture of a woman, a photograph of a prize-fighter, and some colored
portraits of goats to advertise various brands of beer. Many times, no
doubt, these boys and young men have found visions of a sordid kind while
gazing on the actress, the fighter, or the goats. But what poor material
they had in the wardrobes of memory for the trimmings and habiliments of
vision, to make this lady into Freya, this prize-fighter into Thor, these
goats into the harnessed steeds that drew his chariot! Man's dreams are
rearranged and glorified memories. How could these people reconstruct the
torn carpets and tin cans and waste-paper of their lives into mythology?
How could memories of Ladies' Entrance squalor be made into Castles in
Granada or Carcassonne? The things they drank to see, and saw but
grotesquely, and paid for terribly, now roll before them with no after
pain or punishment. The mumbled conversation, the sociability for which
they leaned over the tables, they have here in the same manner with far
more to talk about. They come, they go home, men and women together, as
casually and impulsively as the men alone ever entered a drinking-place,
but discoursing now of far-off mountains and star-crossed lovers. As
Padraic Colum says in his poem on the herdsman:--

"With thoughts on white ships
And the King of Spain's Daughter."

This is why the saloon on the right hand and on the left in the slum is
apt to move out when the photoplay moves in.

But let us go to the other end of the temperance argument. I beg to be
allowed to relate a personal matter. For some time I was a field-worker
for the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois, being sent every Sunday to a new
region to make the yearly visit on behal