"Strike a Match to the Moral Code and Dance around the Bonfire"

After the end of World War I, perplexing problems arose:

"Tearooms lighted only by candles--which were a blessing in that they saved patrons from having to look at the bad art on the walls--opened up in basements all over Greenwich Village, Chemistry students worked out formulas for homemade gin; Dr. Freud became, temporarily a patron saint; and youth prepared to strike a match to the moral code and dance around the bonfire." [. . . ]

"The revolt of youth was something I refused to take very seriously. There have always been delinquent girls in New York . . . the jazz age did not add appreciably to their numbers."

"When people talked about the wildness of current youth, I thought of those prewar debutantes who used to go to black-and-tan dives in Harlem and dance with men across the color-line. The daring young women of the twenties were less original then they thought."

"I also refused to be appalled by the bohemian tearooms that had invaded conservative Greenwich Village. A few tearooms run by women with a fondness for college girl patronage really were a menace, but most of these arty, batik-hung dives did little harm except to their patrons digestions. That people did a good deal of unnecessary worrying is shown by the fact that the jazz age girls have grown up into mothers, clubwomen and serious careerists who can hardly be distinguished from the products of an earlier date."

[Mary Sullivan, My Double Life; The Story of a New York City Policewoman, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1938. pp.138-130.]