drama type ring quaint in our UNHAND THE MAIDEN fears but in the gaslight era By Bunce emotions were easier to arouse and people had not become This is an age of celebrations. [hardened and insensitised Centenaries, bicentenaries, and|the hard struggle with ma-tercentenaries of writers, poets, scientists, explorers and musicians are cropping up almost daily as people explore the wonderful heritage which past ages have handed on to them and Pay honour to those who left the heritage. But in this movement towards the retrospect which humines "science, music, art, pleasures and conveniences of today not a word is said about the nation's pleasure of another day—the melodrama, that bound-Jess institution of virtue triumphant through poverty, wickedness, tribulations and of human weakness, Let us shed a tear, heave a sigh, hang a wounded heart on the' willow tree, or whatever form our individual grief inclines for this deceased institution of the gaslight days which brought tears to the eyes of Victorian maidenhood and moulded morals for a new age which slips into living memory of even the middled aged.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.