Fresh Every Hour / Detailing the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of One Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal, the Heart of a Child.

by John Peter Toohey

He saw “Billy” Williams look interestedly at the young women and then smile. It was such a healthy, wholesome, frank smile that it was instantly returned by the “Keep Moving” girls and Jimmy found himself taking note of the fact that even the most utterly blase members of the group seemed to drop their affected air of supreme world-weariness for a moment and become human once more. He noticed the evangelist turn away from the press table as the final chorus of the hymn was sung by everyone in the auditorium and look up towards the flag-bedecked rafters for a half minute or so as if pondering on an idea that had occurred to him. As the great audience seated itself he sprang to his feet with an air of decision.

“My friends,” he announced in a voice which swept to the farthest corners of the vast building, “I have an announcement to make that may disappoint some of you. I regret this but my duty is as clear to me as the unclouded noon-day sky. A Divine opportunity for service presents itself to me tonight and I would be recreant to my ideals if I did not embrace it. I had intended to preach to you on some of the lessons which I draw from the disgusting exhibition of prize-fighting which was tolerated in this city during the past week and I had announced that I would tan the hides of some of the city officials responsible for its sanction, and that I would nail those hides on the door of the house wherein abideth decency and honor.

“I have changed my plan, my friends, not because of any fear of the skulking swine whom I had intended to attack. Their turn on the griddle will come tomorrow night. Instead of preaching on that theme I have decided to devote this evening’s discourse to an attack upon the pernicious evils of the modern theatre,—that hell-hole, that cesspool, that slimy sink of iniquity and despair. Bear with me, my friends, for tonight I may be the humble medium by means of which the truth may be brought not only into your own lives, but into the lives and into the hearts of those more directly connected with this unholy institution for the degradation of mankind.”

He paused for a moment while a whispered buzz of comment spread through the auditorium. Jimmy Martin, who had sat fascinated throughout these introductory remarks and who could hardly credit the validity of his own auditory sensations, darted an apprehensive glance at the chorus girls. A few were registering haughty and contemptuous disdain and were sniffing the circumambient air. The majority, however, seemed gifted with a saving sense of humor and were smiling good-naturedly. Jimmy sighed with relief. It was pleasant to think that the Rev. “Billy” Williams was unconsciously playing into his hand so successfully that the story which was now certain to develop would take on an added value and would unquestionably be featured in the headlines.

There was another hymn and then the evangelist plunged into the body of his discourse. It was a sermon that he had already delivered with sensational success in no less than twenty-three states. It was a fine example of unrestrained denunciatory oratory and it ranked with his other internationally famous sermons such as “Dancing—the Devil’s Device for Drugging Decency”; or, “Modern Women’s Attire—Satan’s Trap for the Unwary Male.” He traced the history of the drama from the flourishing days of its great popularity in ancient Greece down through twenty-five centuries to the present day and on the way he stopped to excoriate a long line of playwrights from Aristophanes to the writer of a salacious bed-room farce then current in Boston. He denounced the comedies of Terence at which ancient Rome laughed; the immoral plays which had their day during the Restoration in England and the modern American musical comedy with equal vehemence and with that complete absence of a sense of proportion which always characterizes the propagandist and the special pleader.

He admitted, and rather gloried in the admission, that he had not been in a theatre in twenty-five years and declared that he would sooner be struck dead than ever cross the threshold of one again. On top of this assertion he declared with convincing sincerity, that “I know whereof I speak when I say to you that never before in the history of the civilized world has the theatre quite so flagrantly flaunted its indecencies in the face of an outraged public as at the present time.” He attacked the defenseless moving picture and consigned it and its progenitors and abettors to the exterior darkness.

Then he grew sentimental and his voice, which had been pitched in a high key, became touched with something soft and tender. He gave his idea of what he felt to be the blasting and devastating effect of the world of the theatre upon a girl who might had known the restraining influences of a simple home in her childhood and he presented a picture of the sordid contacts she would be forced to make in seeking a career upon the stage. Jimmy winced at the unreality of this picture; its unfairness and its gross exaggeration, but there was no doubting that the speaker himself believed it to be gospel truth and that he presented it with such convincing sincerity that the vast majority of those present were all aquiver with moral indignation at the charges he made. He let his voice drop to a lower tone, and there was the vibrant tremor of a deeply-felt emotion in it as he spoke, crouching over the reading desk and bending his head forward in an attitude of eager expectancy.

“Mayhap there is such a girl here tonight, drawn hither by the elusive whisperings of a conscience which was developed at the knee of a saintly mother and under the fond paternal care of a loving father. Perchance she comes, like so many of these poor butterflies of the stage, from a home in a small town untouched by the tinsel glitter and the tawdry allurements of the pleasure-ridden metropolis. Perhaps she was caught defenseless in a moment of passionate revolt against what she, poor foolish thing, felt to be the cramping restrictions of her environment, and perhaps she was swept off her feet into the current that leads swift and ever swifter to destruction.

“Perhaps she said good-bye to the peaceful little town, to the heart-broken mother and to the tender, patient father who was trying so hard to stay the flood of tears surging in his kindly eyes; perhaps she went to the big city and courted the muse of tragedy or of comedy and found, for a time, a specious joy in the glare and brilliance of the footlights. Perhaps there came to her a measure of success in the new realm of pleasure and mayhap she was carried out of herself, out of her real self, into a lotus land of dazzling splendor.”

His voice grew more tremulous now. He leaned forward and seemed to be speaking directly to the little group of girls in the front rows. Jimmy noticed that they were the focus point of observation on the part of the reporters.