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<h2>ENLIGHTENMENT</h2> At last I have found out the awful truth about humanity. I never even suspected it. Till last evening I went along my way cheerfully, blindly, never guessing that my fellow-men were steeped in evil. But now I know. My eyes have been opened. For last night I went to one of those enlightening film dramas that reveal life as it is. It was called "Her Blackest Sin," and it comprised nine reels of terrible truth. It was one of those fine moral sermons to which every mother ought to take her son, and every niece ought to take her uncle, and every stepaunt ought to take her Pekingese. I only wish my daughter could have seen it; but as I haven't any daughter, she couldn't have. [Pg 113] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_113.png" width-obs="300" alt="Man and woman." /> She never really intended to become steeped in sin: she was scenarioed into it </div> This drama shows how a handsome but thoughtless woman may sink in sin without ever meaning to. Yes, the strange and pitiful part about it is that she really never intended to be a fallen, crime-seared creature. She sins witlessly: she is scenarioed into it. Perhaps[Pg 114] she is too anxious to please. She appears at wild cabarets and wears gowns that are cut to the quick, not because she desires to of her own accord, but because it is expected of her by the audience. Lack of firmness leads to her undoing: she is first pliant, then supple, then sinuous. She displays too little backbone, and too much. Poor woman, what chance has she amid so many dress suits? Only too late does she learn that stiff bosoms cover none but hard hearts, and that there is no gleam so sinister as that of a silk hat, covering as it does baldness of the baldest sort. Innocent at first, hardly a reel passes before she begins to stop and work her face, just the way the villains stop and work their faces. (Of course, being still a modest woman, she does this only in the privacy of a close-up.) By the seventh reel even her high-minded husband has become afflicted with the taint, and is stopping and working his face. And so the drama progresses, growing blacker and more enlightening every minute. I can't be too grateful to the producers of this film for the unflinching way in which they[Pg 115] accepted the responsibility of my innocence and warned me. If they had not, I should probably have gone to the end of my days without ever knowing that people were at bottom only smiling criminals. But now, thank goodness, I'm warned and on my guard. I'm posted on sin. When a man comes up to me and shakes my hand, I'll know he's a hawk looking for a home to break up; and when a woman smiles at me, I'll know she's a vampire. They won't catch me! I'll just watch them surreptitiously when they are off their guard until I see them working their faces, and then I'll have them! For now I am an expert on evil. That film showed me the thrilling seductions of a life of vice; so that if I am ever confronted by them I shall be able to recognize them at once and say how do you do. And at the end there was one of those solemn moral warnings, such as everybody thinks everybody else is supposed to need; so in future I shall know what to avoid in that line. And this entire transformation of my life cost me only thirty-three cents. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 116] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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