bit of being sent
by confirmed drunkards to buy the "liquid poison!" They thus promoted
this vice whose hardened subjects would prolong It even beyond the grave
by asking that "a bottle of whiskey may be put in their coffin." The
obedience of the children was rewarded by invitations to drink, which
initiated them in debauchery. It was among women abandoned to drink that
lived Eliza Clark, a child of eleven years, paying for the drinks with
the gains which she realized from dancing or singing; in return, the
women gave her brandy to drink and tobacco to smoke, so that when she
was found she resembled "a beast more than a human creature." They also
suppressed the playing of pool for drinks by minors, instituted by
saloon keepers to induce them to drink liquor, which was the reward of
those whom fortune favored in the game.

The police of the theatres performed their duty conscientiously, and the
statutes were obeyed. The necessity of being accompanied by an adult was
felt to be a strange restraint by these gamins eager for the theatre,
whose attractions led them to abandon school, work, and family, and to
procure the money for their admission by stealing it from their parents,
or at a pinch from strangers; and where they would mingle, between the
acts, with pick-pockets and low characters who encouraged them in the
ways of vice. And for a stronger reason, the child was more carefully
protected against the perils of the stage than against those of the
auditory. Juvenile performances were forbidden, and the youthful
performers were excluded successively from the Columbia Opera House or
Theatre des Folies, from the Italian Opera, from the Gem Theatre, from
Parker's American Theatre, and from the Juvenile Opera. Permissions for
individual performances were peremptorily refused even to parents who
were actors. Here the work of the society encountered serious obstacles,
and it is necessary to quote from Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry in order to
appreciate the motives by which the society was actuated in combating
with vigorous purpose the opposition which it met with: "The Press,
which is influenced to a considerable extent by the representations of
theatrical managers, often criticises severely any attempt to deprive
the public of what it is pleased to call its legitimate amusements, by
the suppression of such entertainments. And many pronounced patrons of
the dramatic art even maintain that such exhibitions are indispensable
to the p