| Citation |
FJ.781.056
28 Nov 1781:41 (32)
Several public spirited gentlemen lately under took to put
the long since unhaunted playhouse, in the purlieus of this
holy city, in good order, for the innocent amusement of our
whig brothers and sisters.
One of the encouragers of that laudable scheme, reading
at the coffee-house, Mr. Claypoole's paper of this day,
observed the humble and distant solicitation of the
distressed prisoners in the old goal, who, "with fear and
trembling, " indirectly addressed such readers who had a
heart. The unfortunate prisoners had sufficiently
experienced the inutility of direct applications for relief.
Men in power, and consequently not in distress, carefully
keep at a convenient distance from them every object which
might give them disagreeable sensations.
The encourager of the playhouse repairing club,
fortunately for him, (and it is wished for the prisoners
likewise) was blessed with a heart as well as a head. He
suddenly dropped the paper which he held in his hand; and
for a few minutes, during which the company beheld him
plunged in the deepest meditation, he was altogether silent
and motionless. He then started up, and with the dignity
which his feelings or inspiration gave him, he said to the
bye standers, "How can I join with the steel-hearted sons
and daughters of profusion idleness, and folly, when I hear
the groans of human nature so near the door of the theatre."
[signed] Sympathy. Philadelphia, Nov. 22, 1781.
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