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      N.  Y.  IS
     _____
     Rev. J. Frank Norris
       Shocked At Ways
        Of Metropolis
             _____
       VISIONS DISASTER
             _____
       Raps Dances, Dress,
          Women Smokers,
          And Sex Appeal
              _____
    By Marguerite Marshall

   Billy Sunday said new York was
going to hell.
   J. Frank Norris, the "Texas Tor-
nado", says New York is IN hell-
right here and now!
   (Of course we've all noted that it's
been unseasonably, warm these last
few days.)
   Dr. Norris has come from his 
church at Fort Worth, Tex., to hand
out what he himself describes as "old-
fashioned, hell-fire, red-hot Gospel!"
to this town from the Calvary Baptist 
church.  It is Dr. Norris's mission to
keep burning the home fires long ago
kindled in this particular pulpit by
its regular occupant, the Rev. John
Roach Straton.

SCORES CHURCH DANCE
   All the great cities of America are
in hell," Dr. Norris declared, "but
New York is a little worse than any
of the others.  Sodom and Gomorrah
fell, Babylon fell, Nineveh fell, Rome
fell not from assualts from without,
but from the wickedness of the people
within.  The great cities of today are
in the same case.  The churches are
most to blame--because they no
longer teach people the true Gospel.
   "It is a terrible thing that in
order to get the people into the 
church, the church itself should stage
a dance within its walls as one New
York church did the other day.
   "I'm all against the modern dance.
The basis of it is a pandering to sex,
a stirring up of sex emotions.  Our
grandfathers and grandmothers in the
Virginia reel, used to touch only their
fingers and toes.  Nowadays when they
dance they touch everywhere, except
their fingers and toes!
   "Make a law that no man shall
dance except with his wife.  How
much dancing would you have?  They 
say what they like about the dance 
is its rhythm.  Then let the men dance 
with each other and the women do 
likewise.  They will like it just as well
--if it's rhythm they want.

DOESN'T LIKE UPLIFTERS
   "One of the signs of the break-
ing down of womanhood at this hour
is the exposure of her sacred person.
I have seen women in New York with 
their skirts to their knees and above
their knees.  The clothes worn by
modern women degrade womanhood.
I would do away with decollete dress
altogether, on both moral and physical
grounds.  Any doctor will tell you it
is an invitation to pneumonia and
comsumption.
   "The other day," confided Dr. 
Norris, "a woman uplifter--I haven't
any use for the uplifters--came into
the office and began to talk to me.
First she took off her furs, then she 
took off her coat, and I began to
wonder if she was going to leave any-
thing on at all.  She was a fine look-
ing woman, and she knew it.  She be-
gan to talk about the 'terrible con-
ditions existing today.
   "I looked at her," the "Texas 
Tornado" continued earnestly, "and
I said, 'Madam, you ought to go 
home and put on a dress.  That's
what you ought to do.  You'll be the
ruin of some good men if you keep on
going around this way.'
   "And she laughed--she thought it
was a great joke!"  indignantly com-
mented the revivalist.

ORDERS FOOT LOWERED
   "If I found my daughter wearing
one of these modern dresses," he ad-
ded, "I'd put it in the stove and wrap
her up in a horse blanket.
   "Why, I've had women come in to 
talk with me and cross their knees.
And I'd say, 'Put your foot down."
   It occurred to me that St. Anthony
himself could do no more.  I thought
I'd ask Dr. Norris' opinion of cards
and theater-going and such.
   "Cards," he declared, "were in-
vented to amuse an imbecile king.
Nobody with anything worth while 
to do, anything in his or her brain,
should waste time on them.  For that
matter, I've felt a little more char-
itable toward dancers since my visit
to an insane asylum in Texas.  I no-
ticed that the room in which I was
asked to speak had a smooth, highly
polished floor.  And when I asked 
about it the warden said that the
dance was the only amusement that
would cause inmates to forget
their trouble.  One really couldn't
speak unkindly, you see, of weak
minds.

AGAINST THEATERS
   "I'm against all the theater.  They
exist by commercializing emotions,
and each tries to go a little further
than the other.  Some people may
tell you that there are thearters and
theaters.  But I'm like the old fel-
low who was so lame he walked with 
a big stick and who went to visit the
zoo.  He got along all right until he
came to the snake cage, and then 
the attendants found him poking his
stick furiously between the bars at
the big snakes.  They asked him
what he was trying to do, He said, 
'I kill snakes wherever I see them.'
That's how I feel about the theaters.
   "And I saw the other day that a 
thousand New York women went to 
see men batter each other bloody at
a prize fight, a boxing match.  Don't
you see where that comparison leads?
Straight to the women in ancient
Rome who attended the gladiatorial
shows, and it was the women more
than the men who used to cry,
"Thumbs down!"
  I asked Dr. Norris what he thought 
of the petting party.  Somehow, from
his reply, I doubt if he's seen the real
thing.  But this is what he said:
   "I've seen boys and girls walking 
through the streets of New York with
their arms about each other.  But it's
no use to tell me everybody does this
sort of thing.  Everybody might jump
off Brooklyn Bridge, but I wouldn't
I'd preach at their funeral.  The 
trouble with all our young people
and their amusements is the capital-
ization of sex."

ANENT SMOKING
   Remembering the "vice" of New
York on which--thanks to a pious
aldermanic resolution--the limelight
was most recently played, I asked Dr.
Norris how he felt about cigarettes
for women.
   "The woman who smokes here will
smoke hereafter!"  he exclaimed, as
promptly as if it were new stuff.
"Aside from the moral question," he
added, "how vulgar, how unrefined,
for a delicate woman to be seen with
a cigarette between her lips!  I believe
in the single standard of morality, but
women ought to be better than men.
They're not, today--not anything like
it.  For two men that join the church
there's one woman--think that over!
And when we come to one point that
women are not better and finer than
men, we may as well declare the
world in brankruptcy and appoint the
devil as receiver!"
                _______
   "Good-bye, Dr. Norris," said I,
"and thank you so much."
----