Lipsticks, Soup

" The high society girl is the lowest thing on earth." Dr. John Roach Straton, thunderer of 57th Street, Manhattan, has returned from Europe. Said he:

" Berlin I found to be the worst city in Europe. Somehow, it was worse than Paris, which had always seemed the apex of wickedness. But the French manage to make vice artistic, while with the Germans it is gross. London--well, London is ponderous and heavy, but it is on the way to ruin. It is avoirdupois, not virtue, that holds London back.

"The drinking and smoking among European women shocked me profoundly, for accustomed as I am to cigarette smoking among New York girls, I had never seen it so prevalent in public. And I saw there what I never saw here--girls actually taking out their lipsticks in public. They used so much paint on their lips that they soaked it off with the soup and were obliged to make up again between courses."

". . . Juvenal pictured the fall of the Roman Empire when he described the Roman woman as 'lewd, petulant, reeling ripe with wine.' The modern woman is going the same way."

Dr. Straton is confronted with strife within his church and evil without.