"Il fault bien dire que la danse est quasi le comble de tous vices * * * * c'est le commencement d'une ordure, laquelle je ne veux declarer. Pour en parler rondement, il m'est advis que c'est une maniÉrÉ de tout villaine et barbare * * * A quoy servent tant de saults que font ces filles, soustenues des compagnons par soubs les bras; À fin de regimber plus hault? Quel plaisir prennent ces sauterelles À se tormenter ainsi et demener la pluspart des nuicts sans se soÛler ou lasser de la danse?" L. Vives.

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any will say—have said—Byron wrote against the waltz because a physical infirmity prevented him from waltzing—that he is not a proper person to quote as an example for others to follow. It must be conceded that whatever his motive was, he well knew what he was writing about, and whatever his practices may have been in other respects, it is to his credit that his sense of the proprieties of life were not so blunted as to render him blind to this cause of gross public licentiousness.

But, unlike Byron, I have, as has been stated before, practical experience, and positive knowledge in the matter whereof I speak, and am possessed of the most convincing assurances that my utterances will be received with joy by thousands of husbands and fathers whose views have been down-trodden—their sentiments disregarded, and their notions of morality held up to scorn because they disapprove of this "innocent amusement."

It has also been before said that this vice was "seemingly tolerated by all," but I am proud to say that the placard posted about the streets announcing a

"Sunday School Festival—dancing

TO COMMENCE AT NINE O'CLOCK"

does not reflect the sentiments of the entire community; that in all the marts of business, in every avenue of trade, in counting-house and in work-shop, men are to be found who would shrink with horror from exposing their wives and daughters to the allurements of the dance-hall—men who form a striking contrast to those simpering simpletons who sympathize with their feelings, but have not the courage to maintain the family honor by enforcing their views in the domestic circle.

It is only a few years since the Frankfort Journal announced that the authorities had decided, in the interest of good morals, that in future dancing-masters should not teach their art to children who had not yet been confirmed. The teaching of dancing in boarding-houses and hotels was also forbidden. It is not desirable that the law should interfere with purely domestic affairs, but really it seems as if those unfortunate parents and husbands who shudder at the evil but are awed into silence by ridicule or open rebellion, stand in as urgent need of the law's assistance as the Magdeburg godfathers and godmothers.

I well know that many young ladies profess entire innocence of any impure emotions during all this "palming work."

To them let me say: If you are so sluggish in your sensibilities as this would imply, then you are not fit subjects for the endearments of married life, and can give but poor promise of securing your husband's affection. But if on the other hand (as in most cases is true) you experience the true bliss of this intoxication, then indeed will the ground of your emotions be pretty well worked over before you reach the hymeneal altar, and the nuptial couch will have but little to offer for your consideration with which you are not already familiar.

A friend at my elbow remarks. "I agree with you perfectly, but my wife likes these dances,—sees no harm in them, and her concluding and unanswerable argument is, that if I danced them, I should like them just as well as she does." The truth of this latter statement depends upon your moral perceptions. There is but one answer to the former, given by "Othello,"

"This is the curse of Marriage:

We call these delicate creatures ours—

But not their appetites."

If you are so lax in your attention—so deficient in those qualities which go to make a woman happy—that she seeks the embrace of other men to supply the more than half acknowledged need—if this be true, my friend, I leave the matter with you—it belongs to another class of subjects, treated of by Doctor Acton of London—-I refer you to his able works.

Another says: Both my wife and I enjoy these dances. We see no particular harm in them—"to the pure all things are pure." The very same thing may be said by the habituÉs of other haunts of infamy—

''Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

There is, again, a very large class of dancers who frankly allow that there is immorality in the modern waltz, but insist that this immorality need not be, and by them is not, practised. They dance—but very properly, you know. These are the Pharisees who beat their breasts in public places, crying fie! upon their neighbors, and bravo! upon themselves.

Of course, they will tell you, there are persons who are excited impurely by the waltz, but these are persons who would be immoral under any circumstances. "To the pure all things are pure." It is astonishing how apt they are with these tongue-worn aphorisms. To the pure all things are pure,—yes, but purity is only a relative virtue whose value is fixed by the moral standard of the individual. What would be pure to some would be grossly impure to others, and when you place your wife or daughter in the arms of such salacious gentry as have been described in the foregoing pages are you not pretty much in the position of the gentleman who when gravely informed by a guest who was taking an unaccountably hasty leave that his (the host's) wife had lewdly entreated him, replied: "But, my friend, that is nothing; your wife did as much for me when I visited you last year." This gentleman, remember, was also ready to add: "to the pure all things are pure." The Waltz should assuredly have figured among the "pure impurities" of Petronius.

But even if it be allowed that a lady can waltz virtuously, I have already shown that in that case she must not dance well. And what a pitiful spectacle, surely, is that of a lady trying "how not to do it"—converting her natural grace into clumsiness in order that she may do an indecent thing decently, and remain

"Warm but not wanton; dazzled, but not blind."

But perhaps she cannot waltz. In that case how long will it take her to learn? Will not one single dance lower her standard of purity if her partner happens to be one of the adepts I have described?

"But," cries the fair dancer "you must remember that no lady will permit herself to be introduced to, or accept as a partner, any but a gentleman, who she is sure will treat her with becoming respect."

I will not stop to inquire what her definition of a "gentleman" is—-whether the most courteous and urbane of men may not be a most desperate rouÉ at heart. The attitude and contact are the same in any case, and if it needs must be that a husband is to see his wife folded in the close embrace of another man, is it any consolation for him to know that her partner is eligible as a rival in other respects than his nimble feet—that he who is brushing the bloom from his peach is at least his equal? Can you stop to consider the intellectual accomplishments and social status of the man who has invaded the sacred domain of your wife's chamber? No—equally unimportant is it to you, who or what he may be—that has thus exercised a privilege reserved by all pure-minded women for their husbands alone.

But in this matter of the selection of the fittest the ladies have set up a man of straw, which I must proceed to demolish. In order that the lawless contact may be impartially distributed, and that no lady may be free to choose whose sexual magnetism she shall absorb, we have imported from across the water a foreign variety of the abomination, by which ingenious contrivance the color of the ribbon a lady chances to hold determines who shall have the use of her body in the waltz, and places her in the pitiable predicament of the "poore bryde" at ancient French weddings, who, as we read in Christen, "State of Matrimony," must "kepe foote with all dancers, and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude, and shameless soever he be."

Nor are even the square dances any longer left as a refuge for the more modest, for to such a pitch has the passion for this public sexual intimacy come, that the waltz is now inseparably wedded to the quadrille. Even the old fogies are sometimes trapped by this device. A quadrille is called and they take their places feeling quite safe. "First couple forward!" "Cross over!" "Change partners!" "Waltz up and down the centre!" "Change over!" "All hands waltz round the outside!" and before they know it their sedate notions are lost in the "waltz quadrille." It may be said that every arrangement of the dance looks to an "equitable" distribution of each lady's favors. It is a recognized fact that a lady dancing repeatedly with the same gentleman shows a marked preference thereby—and he is deemed rude and selfish who attempts to monoplize his affianced, or shows reluctance in resigning her to the arms of another.

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