Theatrical
companies and travelling salesmen carried them; visiting merchants
and sightseers acquired them. Pack-pedlers sold vile pictures and
books--the manufacturing or importing of which was now quite an
industry; one might read catalogues printed abroad in English, the
contents of which would make one's flesh creep. There were cheap
weeklies, costing ten cents a year, which were thrust into
area-windows for servant-girls; there were yellow-covered French
novels of unbelievable depravity for the mistress of the house. It
was a curious commentary upon the morals of Society that upon the
trains running to a certain suburban community frequented by the
ultra-fashionable, the newsboys did a thriving business in such
literature; and when the pastor of the fashionable church eloped
with a Society girl, the bishop publicly laid the blame to the
morals of his parishioners!
The theory was that there were two worlds, and that they were kept
rigidly separate. There were two sets of women; one to be toyed with
and flung aside, and the other to be protected and esteemed.
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