dullness of the American Sunday. The sociability and
fun of European outdoor life is here exchanged for the gloom of the
church, the stuffy, germ-saturated country parlor, or the brutalizing
atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibition States the people
lack even the latter, unless they can invest their meager earnings in
quantities of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, every one knows
what a farce it really is. Like all other achievements of Puritanism
it, too, has but driven the "devil" deeper into the human system.
Nowhere else does one meet so many drunkards as in our Prohibition
towns. But so long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul
breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant. Ostensibly
Prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and economy,
but the very spirit of Prohibition being itself abnormal, it succeeds
but in creating an abnormal life.

Every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises the spirits,
is as necessary to our life as air. It invigorates the body, and
deepens our vision of human fellowship. Without stimuli, in one form
or another, creative work is impossible, nor indeed the spirit of
kindliness and generosity. The fact that some great geniuses have
seen their reflection in the goblet too frequently, does not justify
Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole gamut of human emotions.
A Byron and a Poe have stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans
can ever hope to do. The former have given to life meaning and
color; the latter are turning red blood into water, beauty into
ugliness, variety into uniformity and decay. Puritanism, in whatever
expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look
strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until
the entire fabric is doomed. With Hippolyte Taine, every truly free
spirit has come to realize that "Puritanism is the death of culture,
philosophy, humor, and good fellowship; its characteristics are
dullness, monotony, and gloom."

[1] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Havelock Ellis.

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN

Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery--the white slave
traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard of conditions," and
lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror.

It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted
from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against
indecency, gambling, sal