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THE 



Dance of Modern Society. 



BY 



WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. 



NEW YORK : 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, 

lo AND 12 Dey Street. 

1884. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in tbe year 1S84, by 

Fl'NK & Wagnall?, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE. 



Since first proponnding, in another form, to a 
local and limited public, the views set forth in 
the following pages, I have seen no reason for 
seriously modifying the expression in which, 
under the stimulus of a particular occasion, I 
then uttered my mind, my conscience, and my 
heart on the subject discussed. The particular 
occasion, I may say, was the occurrence of an 
evening party at which, very unexpectedly to 
some of those in attendance, the customary de- 
corum of the old-style cjuadrille — that, I think, 
was the dance — was disturbed by the introduc- 
tion into it of what may perhaps be called a 
new 'figure,' consisting in an encirclement (^'f 
the lady by her partner with l::o arms thrown 
about her. A friena of mine, a gentleman 
possessing the finest social qualities and ec.n- 
manding the best social position, remonstidted 
with me oncj aarainst what he felt to be the too 



4 PKEF ACE. 

great strictness of my teachings on the sabjeet 
of the Dance. I listened to him silently, with 
the sincerest respect, while he insisted that 
sqaare dances were different enough from roand 
dances not to be included with these in the same 
indiscriminate condemnation. (And in truth I 
do not so include them.) " The trouble is," ray 
friend went on regretf ollj to saj, " the trouble 
is, wherever I go, the young people will not be 
satisfied to stop after enjoying square dances. 
They will have the round dances before the 
evening is out." 

This inextinguishable tendency in the Dance 
to proceed from degree to degree, determines 
the uncompromising tone which I trust may be 
forgiven me in the pages to follow. 



THE DANCE 



MODERX SOCIETY. 



I PE0P05E au -Qiinsual compliment to the 
Dance — I propose to discnss it. I clieerfally 
lend it dignity for the pnrpose. I pledge my- 
self, besides, to put it permanently beyond 
the need of borrowing again. For I shall be 
able, I believe, t<3 vindicat-e for it a dignity aU 
its own — the dignity of being exceedingly evil 
— a dignity which, bowever modestly worn, I 
think that it possesses in a degree eommensnrate 
vrith the magnitude of its littleness in every 
other respect, 

I pnrpose, then, to discuss the Dance as prac- 
tised in modem society. I pnrpose to disensa 
it earnestly, bnt temperately, with strong con- 
viction certainly, bnt withont nnreasonable pre- 
judice, ai^d in a manner not to violate the deeo- 
mm of a sincere personal respect toward those 
who agree with me in zeal for good morality, 

(o) 



T HE D A N C E O F 



but differ with me in opinion upon the present 
topic. 

I do not, it will be seen, affect tlie candor 
either of ingenuous inquiry or of judicial neu- 
trality. Much less do I affect the candor of a 
merely curious unconcern. I appear as an ad- 
vocate, and I do not expect, as I shall not at- 
tempt, to avoid the vehemence of advocacy. T 
volunteer my office on behalf of several imper- 
illed interests, all of them valuable, and one at 
least vital. It is the cause at once of Health, 
of Economy, of the Social Nature, of Intellect- 
ual Improvement, and of Morality, that I de- 
fend. I undertake to implead the Dance in 
their joint behoof as the common and equal 
enemy of them all. 

I shall summon the accused to answer, not at 
the bar of passion, however holy and religious, 
and not before the tribunal of Scripture, how- 
ever clear and authoritative, but rather in the 
wide and open forum of reason, of conscience, 
and of common sense. If the Dance can escape 
conviction here, she shall be welcome for me to 
make her pirouette, and go tilting out of court, 



MODERN SOCIETY. 7 

free to take her cLances of living down, as best 
slie may, the ancient and sacred suspicion 
against her, which still survives in that one safe 
sanctuary left for a badgered and brow-beaten 
morality ready to be ashamed of itself — the in- 
violate bosom of the Christian chm*ch. 

The conscience and the sentiment of the 
Ajnerican community produce a tolerably uni- 
form annual crop of discourses and of newspa- 
per articles on this favorite social amusement — 
" social amusement " — it would be hard to deny 
it the name by which, with a Mephistophelian 
sort of pleasantry suspiciously its own, the 
dance has succeeded in getting itself currently 
called. A chance sermon or so from time to 
time attains to the temporary apotheosis of 
print, and still there is room perhaps for the use 
I now make of the press to treat of a social 
usage which, what with the talk that it occasions, 
and the talk that it supersedes, usurps the place 
of more conversation in so-called society than 
perhaps any other human interest in the 
world. 

Here, then, is the phenomenon of a soeial in- 



8 TIIEDANCEOF 

stitution that has grown to a really overshadow* 
jng greatness among us almost unperceived, 
simjilj bj the policy of maintaining always, 
with a persistent laugh, that it was quite too 
small to merit a serious word. I have a serious 
word, notwithstanding, to say, and I am wdlling 
to compromise the dignity of authorship, in the 
judgment of any who may think that I do so, 
by saying it in a little book. 

The subject of amusement at large, it would 
not comport with the simplicity of my present 
purpose to discuss. But a remark or two in 
passing will not be irrelevant. 

It is an ill augury for a Christian age to be 
spending much brain and breath upon the ques- 
tion how to amuse itself. Upon the whole, it is 
a pagan question ; and paganism itself has al- 
ready declined from its heroic virtue before it 
condescends to entertain it. But if Christian 
teachers allow themselves to be caught with 
this wile of the de\dl, and submit to waste their 
earnestness in pitiful casuistry upon points of 
what ? and when ? and where ? and how much 1 
and how ? in the art of amusement, whence, one 



MODERN SOCIETY. 9 

might implore to know, are we to liope for the 
voice that shall re-animate an abject and obliv- 
ious age ? If the salt have lost his savor, where- 
with shall it be salted ? And if the blind lead 
the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. 

The truth is, the most of those who clamor so 
unappeasably for amusement are precisely that 
class of persons who need amusement least. 
They are the cloyed, the sated, sons and daugh- 
ters of ).»leasure, those who feel the " full- 
ness of satiety " — who sigh, like the Eastern 
prince, for a fresh sensation, and languidly 
offer a prize for a new device of diversion. 
These jaded voluptuaries need nothing so little 
as amusement, '\yhat they do need is the 
bracing tonic regimen of wholesome, honest, 
useful work — such as the teeming dispensary 
of Providence is never at a loss to supply. 
They might well mistake the thrill of unaccus- 
tomed and unexpected delight which would go 
through their lax nerves with a few strokes of 
vigorous work in some good cause, not in their 
own, for that novel and delicious tingle of 
pleasure which they had been awaiting and 



10 T H E D A X C E O F 

invoking so long. How crass the folly of try- 
ing to satisfy these morbid seekers after amuse- 
ment by giving them what they crave ! 

And yet a cry from time to time arises, a cry 
likely to be renewed with each fresh generation 
of members arrived at the responsibility of man- 
agement, summoning the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Associations of the country to enter the 
field of competition to purvey amusement, as if 
for this very class of minds. The plan would 
be to enrich the variety of entertainment that 
now invites the young to an evening of rational 
enjoyment in their hospitable rooms, by adding 
facilities for games, such as backgammon, 
draughts, chess, billiards, perhaps cards. It 
would prove, I cannot but believe, a hazardous 
career of experiment. Our Christian Associa- 
tions cannot afford to transform themselves into 
clubs, clubs diffei'ing from the ordinary sort 
only in being conducted on quasi-charitable 
pi'Inciples. It is creditable to the good sense 
which has always prevailed, to a singular ex- 
tent, in the counsels of these bodies that they 
have for the most part hitherto resisted the 



MODERN SOCIETY. ll 

urgency that has impelled them toward danger- 
ous extremes in the new direction. It is most 
earnestly to be hoped that a wise conservatism 
will continue to be the spirit that rules them. 
Whatever may be the theoretical truth respect- 
ing the matter, it is difficult to conceive of any 
practical administration of such, a plan that 
could make it successful. The theory of it I 
believe is a false theory ; but if the theory of it 
were true, tlie practical realization of the theory 
is beset witli innumerable, and, in my opinion, 
quite insminoimtable, difficulties. Our senti- 
mental times mistake in supposing that evil can 
be induced to shade off into good by insensible 
degrees. You can never make the transition 
from sinful pleasure to iimocent pleasure any- 
thing less than a violent transition. The ease 
of transition is all the other way. It will be 
found fearfully practicable to educate country 
boys to love the billiard-table, and to cast the 
mothei-'s tearful warning against it behind their 
'backs, in the conceit of a more modern Chris- 
tian wisdom to be had in the city. It will be 
fomid easy to give country boys so much practice 



12 THE DANCE OF 

witL cue and ball as shall take away their guar- 
dian shame of accepting some farther-developed 
acquaintance's invitation to turn into a down- 
stau's billiard-room on the street. This drift of 
education will prove easy and swift. All the 
natural forces of a world of evil will assist it. 
But when the direction is reversed, it will be a 
different matter. When it comes to decoying 
away a country boy, that has once got the taste 
of that strange sweetness under his tongue, 
from the haunt of pleasure without restraint to 
the home of pleasure under Christian law — ^the 
managers of the Associations I fear will find that 
it was the sin that gave zest to the pleasure in- 
stead of the pleasure that gave zest to the sin. 
If for every boy enticed to virtue by the bait of 
mere pleasure, there are not two boys enticed to 
sin thereby — why, I shall be sincerely rejoiced, 
and the originator of the plan will deserve the 
credit of having reinforced the gospel of Christ 
with an elemental power of salvation not re- 
vealed by its author. Alas ! men readily follow 
lures of pleasure on the way to hell, but they 
revolt, with an obstinacy that is half perverse- 



MODERN SOCIETY. 13 

ness and half honest indignation, against fol- 
lowing lui-es of pleasure to heaven. But this 
whole subject is one that demands and will re- 
ceive ample discussion. 

The dance is popularly reckoned among 
amusements. But for this I should not need 
to waste a word upon the matter of amusement 
in general. As it is, in finding a quarrel with 
the dance I shall be held to be waging war 
against amusement, unless I explain myself in 
a paragraph or two. Briefly, then, I am not an 
enemy to amusement. I believe in it. I be- 
lieve in it heartily. I believe in it so heai-tily 
that I would give it a better name — I would 
call it recreation. But amusement needs no 
eulogist. It has happened, by the chance con- 
currence of two conditions having no necessary 
relation to each other, that the cause of popular 
amusement has of late enlisted among us a sin- 
gularly numerous and brilliant literary cham- 
pionship. In the first place, there is a perva- 
sive liberalizing spirit abroad everywhere in our 
modem American atmosphere, that tends to 
relax the tone of moral sentiment respecting 



14 TUEDANCEOF 

all forms of hiiman self-mdulgeiice and material 
enjoyment. But in tlie second place, it is an 
incident of our nineteenth century civilization 
that we live intensely. Everybody is in a 
chronic state of huny. This highly stimulated 
rate of living takes reprisals upon our vitality, 
and we vibrate between extremes of abnormal 
activity and extremes of abnormal exhaustion. 
In the extremes of exhaustion we desperately 
implore some sudden restorative. This restora- 
tive it is the transitory fashion of our disease 
just now to imagine that we recognize in 
amusement. Our men of letters, as the most 
sensitive children of civilization, are perhaps 
the severest suiferers by the prevalent unnatu- 
ral velocity of living. It is but a matter of 
course that they should most keenly feel the 
need of an instantaneous remedy for their enor- 
mous overdrafts on a too responsive vitality, and 
should most credulously hail whatever remedy 
presents itself to then* demand. 

JSTow I sympathize vividly with all my liter- 
ary brethren in the sense of bodily prostration 
which follows intellectual toil. I know as well 



M O D E K N 8 O C I E T Y . 15 

as any what it is to have the omnivorous and 
insatiable brain suck vigor out of every nerve 
and muscle, out of every joint and marrow, in 
the body, and leave the whole man a-quiver 
with intense and fine exhaustion. I have kno^^^l 
this, and with all my literary brethren I have 
longed for relief, and "trusted any cure." It 
costs perhaps the most exquisite agony, except 
the agony of remorse, of which an aspiring 
mind is capable — to lie still and experience tlie 
conscioiis impotence of power. Is there no se- 
cret of eternal youth for the eager brain, that, 
with a grief to which the fabled grief of Alexan- 
der was a vulgar emotion, is compelled to sink 
helplessly on the hither side of an imeonquered 
world, which it yet feels to be inalienably its 
own, although by right of a conquest never to 
be accomplished ? It is not an ignoble errant- 
ry that wanders in quest of such a prize. 

But I am profoundly convinced that the bent 
toward "^ amusement,' or 'recreation,' or * mus- 
cular development/ call it what you will, that 
distinguishes the actual moment, is a wrong 
bent — a. monstrous moral and physical blunder. 



16 THE DANCE OF 

It is both a whimsical and a pathetic sign of the 
times to read the glowing ascriptions to ' mus- 
cle' with which perio'lical literature is plenti- 
fully illustrated from the pens of writers whose 
own muscle has been fairly eaten up by their 
Drains. It is perfectly manifest that the pre- 
vailing literary humor, with respect to amuse- 
ment, is a sanguine hope that amusement may 
prove to be the long-sought medicine, which 
shall be able to repair the hav^oc done to the 
body by the starved brain in its voracious for- 
ages for food. 

Literary men are not loug in finding out from 
experience that, except within certain narrow 
limits easily overpassed, muscular activity and 
cerebral activity are implacable mutual enemies. 
There is no better wisdom on this subject than 
that which Hawthorne derived from his share 
in the Brook Farm experiment. The reader 
will find it set doT\Ti in the " Blithedale Eo- 
mance." Hawthorne found that Arcadia and 
A.ttica were very distinct provinces. He says 
that when muscle worked, brain woidd not. 
This, I take it, is the invariable ex]-)erience of 



MODERN SOCIET-Y. 17 

every literary man. The consequence is tJiat 
the athletic sports, which are praised bj men of 
brain, are practised by men of muscle. Liter- 
ary men, meanwhile, betake themselves to forms 
of amusement less arduous to their softened 
bodily fibre. They patronize the theatre, the 
opera, the billiard table, and, now and then, the 
dance. 

But they still commit a blunder. Is it recre- 
ation, for example, to an editorial writer, to 
rush from his mental workshop, with the anvil 
of his brain red-hot under the swift and cease- 
less blows of thought, to a place of public enter- 
tainment, and there rob sleep of the precious 
hours before midnight by diverting himself 
with a spectacle ? jSTo doubt such diversion is 
better for his over-wrought brain than it would 
be to continue the tension which the change 
partially relaxes. But manifestly rest is his 
true medicine. If he must interpose some such 
transition, by way of opiate to prepare him for 
sleep, that only shows his need of rest to be the 
more desperate. When a man has to resort to 
soporifics so exhausting that it would task an 
2 



18 THE DANCE OP 

unbroken vigor of health simply to sustain them 
with impimity, that man's condition goes far 
toward resembling the condition of a time-piece 
whose main-spring has given way jnst after 
winding. There is nothing to reserve and regu- 
.late his expenditure of vitality. He is continu- 
ously and rapidly, he may be helplessly, nmning 
down. We are in urgent need of a new liter- 
ary period. It should be one eulogistic of eest. 
Of all the absm'd resorts, however, for recre- 
ation, the dance is the most exquisitely absurd. 
I shall hardly escape the charge of Puritan- 
ism for saying this — although the very nn-Puri- 
tanic Thackeray does not hesitate to set a man 
down for an ass that confesses himself fond of 
dancing. I should myself select another an- 
imal as the proper analogue for such a man. It 
is not pleasant to be called Puritanic now-a- 
days. It requires either a strong nerve or a 
thick skin to incur the epithet. The days of 
heroic fame, for the Puritans, seems to have 
passed, and we are taking our reveugo upon 
them now for having been praised so long. 
They were a grave order of great souls, whoso 



MODEEX SOCIETY. 19 

faults, like their virtues, were on an ample pat- 
tern. They undoubtedly went too far in moral 
severity ; but it was a pathway of error in 
which their following was never likely to be 
large, since it led only through toil and loss for 
themselves, if imhappily it did also lead to 
some discomfort, and even sujffering, for others. 
Their figure in history is large enough, and 
uniqne enough, to make them an inviting target 
for the small archery of the witlings of om* 
gamesome generation. Even Lord Macaulay 
having lauded them, in a strain of appreciation 
which at least had the generosity, if it had also 
the extravagance, of youth in it, in his essay on 
Milton, afterward recollected himself to punc- 
tm'e them with more than one of his polished 
stiletto antitheses, in his History of England. 
Hardly any of those brilliant surprises of style, 
which constitute at once the streno-th and the 
weakness of this great master of composition, 
has enjoyed a more popular feme than the ver- 
bal lasso which he let fly at the Puritans, when 
he said that they hated bear-baiting, not be- 
cause it gave pain to the bears, but because it 



20 THEDANCEOF 

gave pleasure to the spectators. How many 
have smiled, with involuntary applause, at this 
epigrammatic snare for the hapless Puritans, 
and how few have ever troubled themselves to 
perceive that the game which it catches is . not 
the Puritans at all, but the epigrammatist him- 
self. For why, pray, should the Puritans have 
hated bear-baiting, but because it gave pleasure 
to the sjje^tators ? Was not that the demoral- 
izing element in the sport ? And were not the 
Puritans then right, if, as Macaulay says, they 
hated bear-baiting for the destructive pleasure 
that it gave to the spectators, rather than foi 
the destructive pain that it gave to the bears. 
It is seldom that the fowler is more neatly tak- 
en in the snare that he lays.* 

* Macaulay is at curious pains to show, in a note, that 
the Puritans were not actuated by compassion for the 
bears. He cites, in proof, a Puritan document which re- 
lates how some bears were seized and shot by the Puii- 
tans on the Lord's day, when the sport was at its height. 
It might, to be sure, be plausibly maiutained, against Ma- 
caulay, that such a sudden end of the baiting was even a 
measure of mercy to the poor beasts ; but it would be safe 
to concede to the great historian's need, that the Puritans 
were not sentimentalists. It was hardly worth his learn- 
ing to demonstrate it. 



MODERN SOCIETY. 21 

Out modern festive wisdom is far too self- 
complacent. It is not certain, after all, that tlie 
Puritans were not nearer tlie truth than we. 
Grim earnest is nobler than play run mad. It 
is even more joyous. It is open to fair doubt 
whether the Puritans were not a happier race 
of beings than their jovial descendants. And, 
in the long run, excessive gravity is not more 
cruel than excessive levity. Puritan Boston in 
the seventeenth century is a less depressing 
spectacle, to the thoughtful student of history, 
than is Kouveau Paris, or I will say New York, 
in the nineteenth. 

Thus much of amusement in general — a sub- 
ject long since copiously enough, but by no 
means as yet exhaustively, discussed. My pres- 
ent business, however, is with the dance, not as 
an amusement, but as an existing social institu- 
tion. For all that I have to say of it, it might 
as well be serious as sportive. Indeed I expect 
to succeed in making it far more serious than 
sportive. I am to enquire into the bearing of the 
dance upon several important human iiiterests. 

In the first place it is hardly necessary to say 



22 THE DANCE OF 

that dancing, in itself, 13 perfectly innocent. 
jSTo one denies tMs. It is as harmless to dance 
as it is to walk, or- to run. But the present 
question is not of dancing in the abstract. 
Dancing does not exist in the abstract. It ex- 
ists, like most things, in a certain way. It is 
of dancing, as thus practised, in a certain way^ 
that I am going to sjDeak. I do not restrict my 
argument or my conclusion to baUs or public 
assemblies. I should waste my zeal. There is 
happily, as yet, too unanimous a sentiment 
among sensible people against them — ^unless the 
case happens to be that of the quadrennial in- 
auguration ball, or other such assembly, by 
which it is the barbarian custom stiU to soil om- 
social purity and signalize some public occasion. 
The charity ball, too, is a variety of the public 
dancing assembly to which special indulgence 
seems to be accorded. It is respectable, it is 
even distinguished, (somewhat promiscuous 
though inevitably the attendance must be) 
to decorate these occasions with your presence, 
and make your giving to the poor delightful 
with the dance. 



MODERN SOCIETY. 23 

Nor jet do I restrict my argiimeiit, or ray 
conclusion, to those rhythmic gyrations popularly 
called " romid dances." A popular magazine 
never distinguished for martja-dom to piinciple, 
may safely inveigh against these. The argu- 
ment is merely some degrees stronger, and the 
conclusion some degrees clearer, against such 
excessive developments of the primordial idea. 
When I name tlie dance (for the sake of being 
perfectly understood, I may say) I mean the 
dance as many of tlie most respectable members 
of society, including no inconsiderable propor- 
tion of accepted Christians, not unfrequently 
practice it. I am thus frank, not for tbe sake 
of seeming bold, but for tbe sake of being clear. 
My readers need none of them be at any loss as 
to just vvliat I mean. I mean the dance as it 
flourishes in the most proper and reputable cir- 
cles to-day. 

For tbe sake of persj)icuity and convenience 
I shall pursue the present investigation into the 
propriety of the dance, under the following 
general topics. The division will, I trust, be 
found sufficiently common-place and obvious. 



24 TIIK DANCE OF 

I. Tlie bearing of the dance upon tlie 
Healtli ; 

II. Its relation to Economy ; 

III. Its Social Tendency ; 

IV. Its Influence upon Intellectual Improve- 
ment; 

y. Its Moral or Religious Aspects. 

This order of investigation is not merely 
mechanical and fortuitous. It wiU prove to 
build a cumulative argument, bearing with 
multiplied power, upon the paramount interest 
involved, that of morahty or religion. The 
chief sufferer suffers not only its own injury, but 
also the injury of all the rest. 

I. What bearing does the dance, as it .exists 
among us, have upon Ihe health ? An amuse- 
ment ought at least to be harmless in its hygi- 
enic effects. If it does not build uj), it should 
certainly not break down. Now the dance, 
considered apart from its conventional purposes, 
simply as a physical exercise, might conceiva- 
bly be so conducted that it would constitute a 
wholly health-giving pastime. In the open air, 



M O D E K N S O C I E T Y . 25 

at rational hours of tlie day, for a rational length 
of time, scarcely to exceed say an hour, those 
participating in it baing suitably attired to 
permit the freest play of the lungs — these 
and other hke conditions fulfilled, and the 
dance, no doubt, might make good a claim to be 
ranked as a healthful div'ersion. There would 
still remain other points of impoi-tance to be 
settled, before its propriety could be unreserv- 
edly admitted ; but regarded merely with ref- 
erence to health, the dance might then pass 
without challenge. 

But suppose all these rational conditions re_ 
versed. The gymnasium, in the American use 
of the tei*m, is an establishment expressly de- 
voted to purposes of physical culture by means 
of physical exercise. What would be thought of 
a gymnasium that should carpet its floors, and 
close its windows, that should then announce its 
hours of exercise as commencing at ten o'clock 
at night to continue until two or thi'ee o'clock in 
the morning, interrupted by a sumptuous mid- 
night feast, all with an in-door atmosphere, 
doubly heated and doubly con-upted by fires 



26 T II E D A N C E O F 

and by a dense crowd of jostling guests, redo- 
lent of perfumes, met under rigorous demands 
that their dress should be such as to repress res- 
piration, and to embarrass eveiything like nat- 
m'alness and ease of movement ? What if, be- 
sides, the conditions should be so contrived as 
to compel the unnaturally heated gymnasts to 
make their transition to a contrasted atmos- 
phere out-of-doors, exposed in the most sensitive 
parts of the body, through insufficient clotliing, 
to the risks of rheumatism, neuralgia, colds, 
catarrhs, consumption ? What, I ask, would be 
thought of a gymnasium that should conduct 
its exercises on such a plan as this ? But is not 
the parallel suggested, mainly, and with a mar- 
gin in favor of particular instances, a tolerably 
fair one ? 

I repeat that I am not discussing the dance 
as it might be, but the dance as it is. Those 
pnblic-si^irited and philanthropic individuals, 
who, inspired with zeal for the morals of soci- 
ety, are at present engaged in the hopeful enter- 
prise of elevating the stage to its true i30sition, 
as yoke-fellow to the pulpit in the inculcation 



MODEEN SOCIETY. 27 

of vii'tiie, will scarcely have time after they 
have finished that task to perform a like service 
for the dance, in making it what it should be as 
the handmaid of medicine in advancins: the 
standard of the general health. Otherwise, the 
two projects are such natural twins they would 
appropriately be entrusted to the same hands 
for execution. 

We witnessed a few years ago a brilliant re- 
vival of the pure drama iu our metropolis, A 
man of genius, and a man of character as was 
supposed, the lieu* of rare ancestral histrionic 
fame, achieved more than one man perhaps 
ever before achieved for the rescue of the stage 
from the drag of that downward moral and 
aesthetic gravitation which it has never suc- 
cessfully resisted hitherto. A temple reared 
and gifted by his own fortunate and munificent 
theatrical piety, scenery and appointments un- 
paralleled for splendor, a generous public sym- 
pathy with remarkable talent and enterprise, 
the auxiliar hopes of all cultivated lovers of the 
spectacle — these composed a set of auspices such 
as probably will not soon smile on an attempt 



28 THE DANCE OF 

to save tlie drama again. The success seemed 
at first to confirm the auspices. The patronage 
of the new theatre was said to be made up in 
part of elements that had been fairly won over 
to the friendly side from the i-anks of those 
previously hostile to the stage. It really looked 
as if there were some Christians ready at last to 
use their influence toward the purification of 
what they have striven in vain to abolish. For 
this is the flattering hope with which Christian 
people have long been allured to the counte- 
nancing of the theatre. They have been told 
that by resolutely refusing to attend the theatre, 
they have, in eftect, deprived it of that conserv- 
ative influence which it was in their power to 
exert, and which was necessary to keep it from 
degenerating to the level of its more degi'aded 
patrons. Those Christian men who think that 
they are surely wise, if they are only not ex- 
treme, have been tempted to take some such 
middle ground in respect to the theatre as this. 
Now, as "Webster told Mr. Hayne, if a thing is 
to be done, an ingenious man can tell how it is 
to be done. Let us see how the stage is to be 



MODEEN SOCIETY. 29 

regenerated by Christian patronage of tlie stage. 
Managers, of course, conduct their operations 
with a thrifty eye to the avoidance of deficits 
at the end of the season. They aim to please 
their patrons. Christians, therefore, in order to 
influence theatrical management, must not 
merely give moral, they must give material, 
support to the theatre. They must go to the 
plays. They must go often enough, and in 
nmnbers enough, to compose a preponderating 
proportion of the attendance. Now, the Prot- 
estant Chiistians of JSTew York number, by 
probable computation, about a hundred tliousand 
out of a million and a half of inhabitants. Sup- 
posing a general agreement among them all 
that a regular attendance at the theatre was at 
this juncture the most pressing and most prom- 
ising method of evangelic effort, they would not 
then constitute even one-tenth of the numerical 
patronage which the management would study 
to please. Kather a slender minority to dictate 
the character of the representations. But on 
certain evenings of the week obedience to their 
Master, in a point where there could be no mis- 



30 THE DANCE OF 

taking of His will, would draw them away to 
their own assemblies for conference, and foi 
prayer that their zeal in pm-ifj-ing the theatre 
might be successful. On those evenings, what 
if Satan should put into the heart of the man- 
agers that then, at least, there could be no ob- 
jection to letting do^vn the moral standard to 
the taste of " the general " — would the gain be 
great ? Or if, for the sake of making their in- 
fliience more sensible. Christians should concen- 
trate theii* patronage upon some one theatre, 
and should succeed in rendering that unexcep- 
tionable, is it certain that ten other theatres 
would not spiing up to supply the starving ap- 
petite of the populace outnumbering them ten- 
fold for low representations ? The purification 
of the theatre is the merest catchword that ever 
snared a hopeful and credulous public. It means, 
at most, but the maintenance of one theatre in 
a great city, where a high moral and aesthetic 
standard of representation is observed. That 
might be a gain to the iutellectual facilities of 
the community, but it would not be one infin- 
itesimal degree of progress toward any substan- 



M D E R N S O C I E T Y . 31 

tial mora] reform. As a matter of present ob- 
servation, did the great dramatic revival pre- 
vent a bottomless degradation of the stage ? 

The close Mnship between the subject of the 
theatre and the subject of the dance, at just 
this point, makes it no di^ession to have spoken 
at such length of the theatre. Chiistian people, 
and moral people, and sensible people in gener- 
al, have been exhorted to smile instead of 
frowning on the dance, in the assurance that, if 
they did so, the wiUfiil but good-hearted little 
jade would be charmed quite out of her frolic 
perverseness, and would settle down into as 
prim and proper a damsel as any reasonable 
person could desire. Eut I suspect that the 
result of such a well-intended attempt at moral 
suasion on the dance would be much the same 
as that sketched for the hypothetical experiment 
on the theatre. There might be moral plays 
and there might be moral dances ; but it is ex- 
ceedingly questionable if either moral plays or 
moral dances would possess that unique aro- 
matic sapor which is requisite in order wholly 
to satisfy the appetite of the original lovers of 



32 THE DANCE OF 

the legitimate articles. It would certainly be 
one of the most sticking spectacles of misguided 
philanthropy and self-sacrifice, that the world 
has ever produced, to behold a well-regulated, 
demure-stepping, devout procession of pastors, 
elders, deacons, and brethi'en, with a spimkling 
of young converts, filing into Wallack's of an 
evening, to assist at the purification of the 
comedy. It would only be equalled by a fes- 
tive assembly of the like characters striving to 
smile benign, and yet superior, on the occasion, 
while, with King David in mind for model, and 
Herodias' daughter for warning, they glided in 
Quixotic benevolence through the stately quad- 
rille, blandly hoping thereby to reclaim the 
dance from the vain world to the pious nurture 
of the Church. 

But it is too serious a matter for irony. 
There is no other social usage whatever that in 
my opinion is, directly and iDdirectly, charge- 
. able with producing more of the ill-health, 
j which, destroying the life-long comfort of our 
wives, our sisters, and our mothers, is steadily 
diluting and corrupting, at its source, the blood 



MODERN SOCIETY. 33 

of our civilization. The general system of late 
hours, which has grafted its monstrous absurd- 
ity upon our modern social life, is probably 
traceable to the dance. Viewed from without, 
the dance is essentially a spectacle, and a spec- 
ta,cle does not love daylight. It naturally seeks 
a less discriminating and a more suggesting il- 
lumination. Or else, from the interior point of 
view, the dance is a syncope of abandonment to 
sensuous pleasure ; and sensuous pleasure is a 
dream which cannot " feel the truth and stir of 
day " without losing something of that delicious 
self-forgetfulness which is necessary to its per- 
fect bliss. In truth, the dance, raised to a Mnd 
of autocracy, has dictated to us in the whole 
conduct of our social life. It has prescribed mid- 
night hours, tight-lacing, paper-soled shoes — in 
short, a good nurnber of those hurtful usages 
which distort the development of modern soci- 
ety. For whatever will serve to heighten the 
illusion and seductiveness of the dance — whether 
it be late hours, with the glare of artificial light 
which they make necessary, smaU waists, to 
render the female fonn as insect-like as possible, 



34 THE DAXCE OF 

tliat it may resemble some imaginaiy sylpli, 
rather than that grand old mother Eve, whom 
God created for a wife to Adam — or whether it 
be their dress, floating like a fleecy cloud about 
the person of the wearer — no matter what it be, 
provided only it will set oif the dance — Fashion 
decrees it and — women adopt it. Thus much for 
the dance as a matter of health. There ^^dll be 
implications under the concluding division of 
the subject, that touching morality, which, re- 
flecting their influence backward upon the first, 
will involve men and women together in phys- 
ical as well as moral injury from the dance to 
ifeven a more serious degree. For the dance is 
not without vital relation to that vice which 
ever and auon forces itself into discussion 
under the euphemism of the " Social Can- 
cer." The sj)irit of fairness of com*se obliges 
me to admit that the extravagances named as 
attaching to the dance are not always carried to 
equal lengths. 

II. I am next to consider the dance as it 
bears upon the matter of Expenditm-e. This is 
certainly a subordinate view of the subject, but 



MODERN SOCIETY. 60 

it is one nevertheless sufficiently important to 
deserve a moment's attention. J^To student of 
history needs to be reminded that there is a 
close connection between the sumptuary habits 
of a people and that people's moral and phys- 
ical virility. Luxury is implacable foe to lon- 
gevity, whether of nation or of individual. 

The dance, I have said, is, so far as concerns 
what passes externally, a spectacle. (The 
chorus of invisible sensations and emotions in 
the bosoms of the participants, is a spectacle 
too — to the angels !) It is frequently pleaded 
for on the ground of its graceful and pictur- 
esque efiect to the eye. Everything that can 
contribute to enhance tliis scenic effect is 
sought for "with eager ingenuity. The more 
splendid the saloon, the more sumptuous the 
appointments, the more brilliant the assembly 
— the greater the social success. Accordingly, 
no end to the rivalry of ladies in attempting to 
eclipse each other in the costly display of furni- 
^ture, of service, of dress, and of jewelry. This 
barbaric competition in lavishness of expendi- 
ture, starting from high places of fashion, travels 



36 TIIEDANCEOF 

outward and downward, through every quarter 
of Christendom, (the unavoidable ii'onj of tlio 
word !) and through every grade of society. It 
tends to impoverish every noble human need to 
enrich tlie insatiable shrine of Fashion. 

That what I say is true any gossipping letter 
of social news (always a feature of leading jour- 
nals, especially while society is holding its court 
at the sea-side, or at watering-places,) giving an 
account of some gay party or ball, is witness. 
Every reader is familiar with the penny-a-liner's 
detail and fine writing with which the greedy 
fashionable public, and perhaps a still more 
numerous pubhc not initiated, and green with 
envy of the fashionable public — very green — is 

informed how the elegant Mrs. A was 

dressed, and what length of trail she drew — 
how many thousand dollars in diamonds flashed 
like fireflies out of the darkness from the raven 

tresses of Mrs. B 's hair, and so on to the 

end of the alphabet. What does not thus ob- 
tain the prize of newspaper publicity, never- 
theless forms the staple of private correspond- 
ence and buzzes about in ladies' small talk. 



MODERN SOCIETY. C^l J 



until attention is absorbed again in still more 
extravagant preparation for the next magnifi- 
cent affair. 

' Society ' has its ' Court Gazettes ' in our re- 
publican metropolis, in which the student of our, 
social manners inay read daily or weekly ad 
nausea/m,, the story of life as it is lived in the 
gay world at home. He must be prepared not 
to gasp with rustic amazement if he lights upon 
a whole coliman of extremely personal gossip, 
studded thick with names printed outright, in 
honest letters unashamed, of ladies that have 
had the good luck to deserve such mention by 
a ball-dress particularly suited to their style of 
beauty, or by a morning toilette, gracefully har- 
monized with their figure and gait on the street. 
Guess, if you can, the vanity that is eating out 
the heart of a society where these things have 
become common. Is it not edifying to read, as 
quite lately one could do, in such a newspaper, 
a solemn propliet-warning to Kew York about 
out-Paris-ing Paris ? 

It may be said that these excesses, w^hich no- 
body will deny, are not confined to the occasion 



38 THE DANCE OF 

of the dance. And it must be admitted tliat in 
trutli tliej are not. Thej are equally incident 
to every so-called amusement that consists 
mainly in making np a sjoectade. The opera, 
and sometimes the theatre, the theatre now-a- 
days more and more I believe, are close of kin 
to the dance in the respects enumerated. I 
hold that in the comparatively sordid interest 
of economy even, how much more in the inter- 
est of simplicity and virtue in public maimers, 
such forms of amusement should be sternly dis- 
countenanced. When Fashion shall miss her 
chance of holding her gay and heartless court 
in the ball-room and opera-house — then we may 
hope to see Christian women free enough from 
a tyranny whose prying and ubiquitous petti- 
ness might have given to Philip II. of Spain 
his favorite idea of kingship — free enough, I 
say, to go to God's house on the Sabbath, with- 
out having their ejaculatory prayers on the way 
disturbed by a persistent accompaniment of 
misgivings as to whether the bonnets they are 
compelled to wear, from the preceding season, 
are not "perfect frights," because, forsooth, a 



M O D E K N S O C I E T V . 39 

trifle less exquisitely ridiculous tlian those of the 
style which has just superseded them ! I may 
be wrong, but it seems to me that the dance, 
being formed upon the idea of a spectacle, and 
converting especially every lady participant 
in it into an object to be gazed at, and to court 
admiration, as the joint chef Wosuvre of the mil- 
liner, of the jeweller, and of the hairdresser — 
it might be unfair not to add also of the danc- 
ing-master — the dance being thus essentially for 
the exhibition of the woman as a thing rather 
than as a person, as a miracle of decorated ex- 
terior, rajther than as the heiress of a pnceless 
heart, and of a beautiful and beautified mind 
— the dance being such has largely contributed 
to the creation of that meretricious taste in 
dress wliich seriously tlu-eatens, through its di- 
rect and indirect economic iniluence, to corrupt 
and deteriorate the very basis of our American 
society. True it is that the comparatively mi- 
pretending arid innocent dancing parties, wliich 
take place in less utterly frivolous circles of so- 
ciety, stop far short of the monstrous extremes 
that I have described. But the tendency is 



40 THEDANCEOF 

one. All rivers run to the sea. These smaller 
assemblies are feeders to the larger. And the 
law issues from the ball-room to the private 
parlor, just as to private theatricals the law de- 
scends from the more elaborate scenic display 
of the theatre. 

III. I am, in the third place, to estimate the 
effect of the dance upon the development of 
the Social Nature. 

The dance is customarily spoken of as a social 
amusement. If society consists in mere con- 
gregation of human persons, then the dance 
may perhaps substantiate its claim to be a so- 
cial amusement. But if, on the contrary, the 
social life of mankind consists rather in the con 
tact of soul with soul, and in commerce of mu- 
tual thought, and feeling, and experience, then 
I maintain that the dance is not only not pro- 
perly social, but is irreconcilably opposed to so- 
ciety. I think that the distinction should be 
remembered and recognized in om' selection of 
words. It is an abuse of language to call a 
herding together of people moving about, no 
matter with how much rhythmic and kaleido- 



MODERN SOCIETY. 41 

Bcopic grace, to music, an exemplification of 
human social life. If Tve needs must have a 
stock epithet to characterize the thing, better 
call the dance a gregarious amusement, and 
leave the nobler adjective for consecration to a 
fomi of human intercourse in which speech 
plajs some part to distinguish it from the mass- 
ing together of a josthng crowd of mute or 
merely gibbering animals. 

Am I unfair to the dance ? ISTo doubt the 
\4ew of it which I am presenting may be novel 
to those easily contented, because unreflecting, 
minds who willingly resig-n themselves to be 
cheated "with the jugglery of words. Because 
it is the fashion to class the dance among the 
social entertainments, most persons passively let 
it go under that disguise. But strip off the 
epithet that belies it, and scan it once in its 
nakedness, and if it does not appear as grim a 
sham, for an exercise of the social natm-e, as 
ever imposed upon intelhgent men and women 
— why then I must confess myself to have mis- 
conceived the truth concerning what social en- 
joyment for the hmnan race should be. 



4c2 THE DANCE OF 

Not long ago, fit a dancing party, it was re- 
marked by a lady, herself I believe a participant 
in tbe exercise, to a person of my acquaintance, 
" I wish there were not so much dancing as 
there is ; it seems impossible to get acquainted 
with each other ! " That woman at least had 
got a peep, probably without knowing it, under 
the impudent mask which still, to the most, 
makes the dance seem a social amusement- 

'No wonder the dance is patronized, as it is, 
by diplomatists and politicians. IsTot all have 
Talleyi^and's art to realize his defhiition of the 
use of language and conceal their thoughts by 
words.* And since it is necessary so often, for 
pubhc and political purposes, that thoughts 
should be concealed, how invaluable a device for 

* A friend, learned in such curious points, has shown 
me a passage in Goldsmith's prose where the fine phrase 
traditionally ascribed to the Frenchman, seems almost to 
have been anticipated. But Voltaire's proud boast, that 
when the Almighty wished a thought to make the circuit 
of the world, he kindled it in the heart of a Frenchman, 
has here its humble fulfillment ; for this mot, barbed as it 
is, with the fitness in it to Talleyrand's character, has 
found a currency in the mouths of men which hardly any 
other authorship supposable could have given it. 



M O D E K N S C I E T Y . 43 

statesmen is an institution like the dance, wliich 
shall enable tham to gratify society by conde- 
scending to be social, without running the nsk of 
saying more than a dozen consecutive words in 
the course of an evening ! 

But it is often insisted that the dance is un- 
rivalled for the ease and grace it imparts to the 
carriage and manners, thus at least removing 
the friction vnth which the want of external 
polish hinders the pleasurable interflow of indi- 
viduals in society. I indulge my private guess 
of at least one Christian man, no longer con- 
spicuous even in his own denominational circles, 
who, transferred for a time by Providence from 
the pastor's personal wrestle with the foes which 
beleaguer youth to a sphere of less publicity, 
where large and lib'eral views of worldly con- 
formity were easier to entertain, capitulated tc 
this temptation, and suffered his children to go 
where the dancino; master mi2:ht soften the nat- 
ural angularity of their movements into the 
flowing curves said to approximate more nearly 
to the ideal of perfect grace. Alas, alas ! Does 
not even the poet teach the Christian teacher a 
deeper lesson than that ? 



a THE DANCE OF 

For manners are not idle, out the fruit 
0{' loyal nature, and of noble mind. 

If such hirelings as Christian parents are able 
to secure to teach, in the capacity of dancing- 
master, elegant manners to their children, can 
in the course of a few afternoons or evenings 
impart to them a hfe-long effect of improve- 
ment, what might not be hoped for, if the home 
itself were made a school of grace and courtesy, 
in which the heart should be taught to tone the 
voice, and light the eye, and mould the mien, 
and modulate all to the rhythmical mood of un- 
dissimulated love ? Who has ever compared the 
Peter that obtrudes his uncouth figure in 
ghmpses here and there through the gospels, with 
the Peter that afterwards betrays so ineffable 
a grace of high-bred com'tesy in his epistles — 
who has ever considered the transformation that 
had passed upon this man in the school of 
Chiist, making the Galilean the cosmopoKte, 
the fisherman the gentleman, — who has done 
this and not perceived that the last accomplish- 
ment of the manners is elsewhere to be sought 
than at the hands of M. Martinet, the dancing- 
master ? 



M O D E R X S O C I E T Y . 45 

AVhile something, nevertheless, may in fairness 
be conceded here to the dance, a very little ob- 
servation accompanied with a very little re- 
flection will, I think, sufiice to convince a can- 
did mind that the institution is hardly all, even 
in this respect, that is claimed for it by its more 
enthusiastic, and especially its professional, dev- 
otees. . It is certainly a service to the social 
interests of men, if the dance does help to create 
that unselfishness between person and person, 
which morality enjoins npon us all as pohtenesp, 
or even to create that aflectation of this, wluch 
we are all of us so well content to accept in- 
stead of politeness. This is the element in 
which mutual intercourse must be transacted, if 
it is to be a source either of pleasure or of profit. 
I would be the last to deny the debt, if the 
dance can show that it does indeed supply such 
a ner.tral condition of lubricity to the agreeable 
mingling of people in society, without at the 
same time overbalancing its credit with deduc- 
tions chargeable on this very score. 

What is the true state of the case ? There 
is, to my mind, something fairly august in the 



46 T HE DANCE OF 

arrogant self-assertion of the dance. It awes 
one — it takes awaj one's breath — one '.& uncer- 
tain for a moment or two in its presence whether 
his iirst principles of com*te3y and good breed- 
ing may not, by some hocus-pocus, have got ex- 
actly reversed without his being aware of it. 
This social amusement flouts you with such 
utterly pitiless, such Gorgonizing insolence, 

Staring riglit on with calm, eternal eyes, 
— if you happen to get into its way ! Until 
you recover your self-possession, you rather be- 
lieve that it must mysteriously be in accordance 
with everlasting principles of politeness that 
you should be flouted. You are in the unenvi- 
able condition of that morbidly modest man, 
whom Tiobert Hall describes as seeming by his 
manner to be asking pardon of everybody for 
taldng the liberty to exist. I have seen a good 
many people who never rally from this uncom- 
fortable hallucination in the presence of the 
dance. The dance plants one foot of its unlim- 
itedly expansible compasses in a parlor, and 
thence widening its sweep, room by room, grad- 
ually and serenely encircles the entire area of 



MODERN SOCIETY. 47 

tlie house that is open to guests. Happj then 
the mortals who do not dance, if they can find 
a secure retreat in hall or entry. ThosG who 
shrink into corners, and those who desperately 
cling to the walls, shall not escape a whisk of 
the tumultuous di'ess, or a thrust of the impor- 
tunate elbow, to disturb the serenity of their 
meditations on the graceful elegance of this ex- 
tremely social amusement. That grave China- 
man, who gazed with the well-schooled wonder 
of a Celestial on the spectacle of the dance as 
exhibited by a company of Eiu'opeans, betrayed 
his innocent ignorance of the real fascination 
of the thing, but he certainly discovered its 
ntter hollo^vness, regarded merely as a social 
enjoyment, when he asked, " Pray, why do you 
not let your servants do that for you ! " Is the 
fact that the dance lubricates the individual 
manners, or that its introduction breaks the ice 
of first reserve which embarrasses the freedom 
of an evening-'B company ; — giving convei'satiou 
foi'sooth such a launch that it is dispensed with 
fi'om that moment forward — is this two-fold 
fact, admitted, a fair offset to the gross, the 



•tS Tir K I) A XCE OF 

egregious ill-inaiiners upon which i have com- 
mented ? It must be added that provident and 
resourceful hostesses guard against such abuse 
of their hospitality by assigning one side of the 
house to those who trip it as they go, and the 
other to those who prefer to preserve postures 
of stable equilibrium — that is to say, by vutu- 
ally making two parties at once. 

I remember hearing the celebrated M. Bau- 
tain, in one of his lectures at the Sorbonne on 
some subject of theology, going aside from his 
main discussion, lament the decline in France 
of the art of conversation. Bon vivant he aj)- 
peared in his redundant physique^ and it was 
almost whimsical to hear him attribute the mis- 
fortune to the habit of after-dinner smoking — a 
habit against which nothing about the lecturer 
himself seemed to protest along with his words, 
except his interdictory quality of Romish ec- 
clesiastic. He thought that the post-prandial 
cigar, banishing men from the influence sup- 
posed to rain from ladies' eyes at jousts of wit 
as well as of aiTias, and enveloping them in a 
haze of oblivious torpor — had chilled the genial 



MODERN so CI p:ty. 49 

currents of that conversational enthusiasm 
whicli once made the table-talk of Frenchmen 
the admiration of cultivated Europe. 

'Now it may well be that what might be called 
the high art of conversation, such, for example, 
as created the nurturing atmosphere for a pro- 
duction like the Autocrat of the Breakfast Ta- 
hle^ is not materially injured by the dance : for 
however much the literary magicians may pa- 
tronize the exercise as a matter of [esthetics, or 
approve it as a matter of morals, they can 
hardly be imagined very sedulous devotees of it 
as a matter of practice : but assuredly, had M. 
Bautaiu spoken from the point of view of av- 
erage American society, he would have been 
nearer the truthi in representing conversation, as 
a diffused and popular accomplishment, to be 
m danger of extinction from the usurping do- 
minion of the dance. 

lY. I have now, in immediate sequence to 
the foregoing, to investigate the influence of the 
dance on the Intellectual Improvement of Soci- 
etv. 



50 T II E D A X C E O F 

Our American life is, from the virtual com- 
pulsion of cii'cumstances, so much absorbed in 
attention to material interests that as a people 
^ve have little time, at the best, to devote to the 
interior culture of ourselves. Literature and 
art, books, pictures, and the other various ob- 
jects of elegant taste, these truly rational top- 
ics of interest to enlightened minds, have the 
very narrowest chance, even with earnest in- 
tentions on our part, to produce their elevating 
and chastening effect upon our lives. Is it not 
shame to us that the golden hours, all too few, 
in which we might exchange with each other 
the thoughts inspired by themes like these, to 
our mutual profiting, should be recklessly squan- 
dered upon a laborious bodily exercise, in which 
monkeys might be trained to display greater 
agility than we, and bears a statelier gravity ? 

What a confession for our young men and 
young women to make that they find it impos- 
sible to get an evening's company to go off well 
without the dance ! How much mental vacuity 
— what achino; and echoins; cranial room for 
knowledge—does such a ( onfession imply ! 



MODEKN SOCIETY. 51 

Oh, young men ! Oh, young women ! Ame- 
rican brothers and sisters, say, — would it not be 
better if you should create and sustain courses 
of lectures for some of your winter evenings — 
if you should patronize the circulating libraries, 
or even the book-stores — if you should sub- 
scribe to some of the hte)*ary periodicals (but 
you will have to wait now until you iecome a 
public fit to support them, before you can find 
many very good at horns) — if you should or- 
ganize reading-clubs, and amateur art associa- 
tions — in sliort, if you should spend a share at 
least of the time and of the money that you 
can command, in acquiring such resources of 
mind, that you would not be obliged to whirl 
each other off into a dance when you assemble 
for an evening together, lest forsooth you shoidd 
not be able to think of anything to say, to re- 
Heve the awkardness of silence? I am met 
with, " Better to dance than to talk and slan- 
der your neighbors ?" True, but so perhaps it 
is better to steal than to commit murder. But 
^hose who refrain from stealing are not there 
fore obliged to commit murder. And those 



52 THE DANCE OF 

w]to refrain from dancing are not obliged to 
rilander tlieir neighbors. There is conversation 
which neither abuses the absent, nor yef in- 
jures the particijDants in it. But the art of 
such conversation is indeed far gone towards 
being lost to a generation that will frisk, like 
Donatello, and fly into the dance, to dodge a 
fair and friendly encounter of mind with mind. 
I am aware that it may be replied : " What 
we "s^ant is amusement. The mental activity 
you are recommending is not recreation." A 
sound philosophy of recreation would require, . 
that those portions of our complex organism 
which are wearied should be permitted to rest, 
while, on the other hand, those which have been 
left comparatively unemployed should at the 
same time be brought into play. J^ow how 
many of our young people in ordinary society, 
exert their minds so strenuously, that their 
health demands a period of mental repose ? By 
all means let such relax the excessive strain. 
But assuredly those who find it out of the ques- 
tion to make an evening's entertainment pass 
off respectably without introducing the dance 



MODERN SOCIETY. 53 

to take the place of conversation, will not claim 
to be of the number. Ko; the people who 
compose society are rather, if thej but knew it, 
feirly tired to death with ev^erlasting amuse- 
ment. It is their business to seek pleasure, and 
no merchant pushes his traffic harder. It would 
be positive recreation to these devotees of so- 
ciety, if they would set themselves at some 
work that should bring their languishing minds 
into action. And then the clerks, for example, 
who are on their feet all day, in a confined at- 
mosphere — is it not too severe a jocularity to 
call it recreation, for these leg- weary mortals to 
dance most of the night, as if their hope of use- 
fulness depended upon their assiduity in it ? Is 
it not clear that what such young men need for 
diversion, is something to employ their minds, 
on matters aside from business, while their tired 
muscular system refreshes itself with rest? Due 
mental exercise is perhaps as essential to health 
as is exercise of the body. 

But I have said enough on these minoi' 
topics of my discussion. The chief topic still 
remains to be discussed. I have expressed my- 



54 T ir E D A N C E O F 

self witli severity ; bnt my readers will surely 
suffer me to be a little out of humor witli a 
usurpation, wliich tyrannizes to sueli disastrous 
purpose, over so fair a realm of human life. 

Y. I come finally to the consideration of the 
dance in its moral aspects. I use the word 
"moral," without designing to distinguish it 
from " religious." I am of the number of those 
who believe that morality, rightly conceived of, 
is the same thing as religion, rightly conceived 
of. If the dance then is consistent with pure 
morality, it is also consistent with true religion. 
If it is a j)roper amusement for the world, it is 
equally a proper amusement for the church. If 
it is morally suitable for the irreligious young 
man who hears a sermon, to dance, it is hkewise 
morally suitable for the minister who preaches 
the sermon, to dance at his side. The question 
remains now to be considered, Is the dance jus- 
tifiable on moral grounds ? 

When the dance is accused, as I have accused 
it, of being injurious to the health, of breeding 
extravagance in expenditure, of hindering so- 
cial enjoyment and profit, and of dissipating 



AI O D E K N S C I E T V . 55 

tlie opportunities of intellectual improveir.eiit, 
the rejoinder is commonly made tliat at least it 
is in itself an innocent, if not a useful way of 
spending the evening hours. " Besides it is de- 
lightful," say enthusiastic young ladies. " We 
take no note of time, when we dance, and are 
conscious of no ftitigue. The music moves us 
almost without our effort. It is actually easier 
to dance, when the fiddle is going, than it is to 
keep still." Well, if this be so, useless as it 
seems in a utilitarian point of view, and fatal 
to self-culture, still, if it be so indescribably de- 
lightful, and at the same time not positively in- 
jurious to good morals,^ why I, for my part, 
say. By all means dance and have a fine time. 
Pity — pity, to be sm'e, that you have not whole- 
some earnestness enough, in some worthy direc- 
tion, to make the frivolity distasteful ; but if yoti 
have not, then there is probably nothing better 
for you, than to resemble those natives on the 
^oast of Africa, of whom it is related that they 
begged their musical European visitor to cease 
fiddling, lest they perforce danced themselves 
to death. But is the dance morally imobjee- 
tionable ? 



56 THE DANCE OF 

I have, it is true, in part forestalled my reply. 
For it would be strictly legitimate to enlarge 
on tlie vicious tendencies always engendered by 
sucb extravagant expenditure as the dance en- 
courages, and almost requires, upon the sordid 
ambition it inspires to outshine one's social 
peers, and the low pride begotten by success 
among those victorious in this barbaric rivalry, 
with the consequent chagrin, and heart-burning, 
and secret jealousy, that follow in the breasts of 
the disappointed, upon its deplorable eflect in 
bounding the personal aspiration to exterior 
elegance in looks, and dress, and manners — it 
would be legitimate, I say, in settling the mora 
propriety of the usage in question, to dwell on 
these things, and I might use unstinted fi'ee- 
dom of language respecting them. But serious 
as they are, they by no means constitute the 
gravamen of the indictment which I bring 
against the dance as enemy to public morality. 
There are graver moral considerations still, in- 
volved in the subject, to which I desire my 
readers to give their thoughtful attention. 
These considerations, however, are such, that 



MODERN SOCIETY. 57 

tliougli they move my feeling to the iiighest 
pitch of moral indignation, I nevertheless must 
pick my expressions with the utmost care, lest 
I offend the decorum which the chaste spirit of 
Christian refinement has taught us to observe 
and to demand in speech. There is an infinite 
slough of pollution, hut scantily crusted over, 
under your feet now, whichever way you turn. 

Incedis per iwnes 
Suppositos ciaeri doloso. 

Alas, that the fatal faux pas, which lets the 
adventurer down, is so much more frequently 
taken in the actual experience of life, than in 
terms of allusion by speech ! 

The dance, then, to say it at once, and plain- 
ly, is an immoral amusement, immoral I mean 
in itself. Of course I am not now traversing 
the statement with which I set out, that danc- 
ing in itself is perfectly innocent. This I as- 
sert again. But I must remind my readers 
that dancing in itself is not under discussion. 
I am dealing with a very different affair indeed 
^a concrete thing, a substance loith accidentSy 



05 TUEDAXCEOF 

say rather a substance whose essence consists in 
its accidents — a social institution, well-deter- 
mined in form, and hitherto as persistent as 
force — or as sin — I am dealing with the dance. 
Xow dancing does certainly occur in the dance 
— but so does breathing; and one comes just 
as near constituting the dance as the other. 

I shall seem paradoxical to many, and I will 
explain. In a single word, dancing is one 
thing and the dance is another. The dance is 
dancing under certain conditions well under- 
stood. The dance, by reason of these constant 
conditions, is an amusement immoral in itself. 
Dancing is an exercise wljjch may be perfectly 
harmless. I should have no objection in the 
world to a dance in which the only participants 
were children too young to be conscious of sex, 
and necessarily incapable of any pleasure in it, 
except that of associated and rhythmical mo- 
tion. Boys and girls might knit hands and b/cat 
the ground together in it to their hearts' con- 
tent, just as they might romp together in field 
or wood. (As a point of hygiene, and of aes- 
thetic even, I should generally insist that it be 



MODERN S OCTET r. 59 

the ground thej beat, and not a floor, much less 
a carpeted floor.) I should have no objection 
to a dance in whicli the participants were exclu- 
sively males, of whatever age, or to one in 
which the participants were exclusively females, 
of whatever age. I should have no objection 
to a dance in which the participation was con- 
fined to the brothers and sisters of one house- 
hold, and tlie parents and gTandparcnts, for that 
matter, if they liked, might join in it with the 
utmost propriety. This style of "parlor danc- 
ing" I would cheerfully permit if I were the 
Solon of society. But I should be Draconian 
enough to exclude neighbors' children, intimate 
friends and cousins of every degree — as long at 
least as human nature continues such that these 
marry and are given in marriage with each 
other. These might, to be sure, be present and 
witness the Terpsichore an performances of the 
family ; but I am afraid that the mere spectacb 
of such domestic felicity would be voted a 
rather tame entertainment. In fact, such is 
human depravity, I have my misgivings that 
the older brothers and sisters of the household 



60 THEDANCEOF 

would almost as lief go back to tlieir Siiiida,y- 
school as to engage in so entirely innocent a 
diversion. 

Upon condition that tlie prevailing moral 
tone of society were such as to keep the dance 
strictly within these limits, I would enter into 
bonds to be the very last to wag a tongue 
against it. I seriously suspect, however, that 
this " peculiar institution" of society, so circum- 
scribed, would follow the example of American 
slavery and refuse to survive its indignation at the 
insult of being kept within impassable bounds. 

It would be the extreme of narrowness not 
to admit, as I cheerfully do, that the limits thus 
laid down for the perfectly safe circumscription 
of the dance, might be enlarged a little now 
and then without serious risk. I have seen 
companies assembled much more promiscuous 
in their composition than those described above, 
in which I veritably think, nevertheless, that 
the evil likely to arise from a brief indulgence 
in the dance would be quite infinitesimal in 
amount. But this admission, made in the ut- 
most good faith, really concedes nothing of any 



MODERN SOCIETY. 61 

practical value. The trouble is, that beyond 
these limits a vigilant discrimination of per- 
sons proper to be included would be necessary. 
This discrimination would be extremely diffi- 
cult often in thought, and it would be infinitely 
delicate in fact. Besides, there is nobody to 
make the discrimination. It would involve on 
many occasions the exercise of a very invidious 
censorship over the moral character of your 
neighbors and acquaintances — a censorship so 
invidious that it would never be undertaken. 
Suppose, for instance, your family, enlivened by 
the casual dropping in of the neighbor next 
door on one side, an unexceptionable man, hap- 
pened to be chasing the glowing hours of an 
evening with fl}"ing feet. The " parlor dancing," 
often so stoutly contended for, is usually de- 
scribed as springing up spontaneously in some 
such unceremonious way. So far I acknowledge 
the harm is purely theoretical — probably. But 
wliile this is in progress, the neighbor next door 
on the other side calls too, in no wise conscious 
of the music and dancing, but led simply by a 
spirit in his feet. Everybody knows that next- 



62 TnEDANCEOF 

door neighbors are always the best of neish- 
bors, but, unhappily, not always the most irre- 
proachable of men. This second caller is not 
beyond reproach. But that does not prevent 
his being fond of the dance, and being, more- 
over, a very graceful dancer. What is to be 
done ? Shall the dance stop ? But if it does 
not, where is your principle of discrimination ? 
It is an impossible discrimination, or so difficidt 
that if faithfully applied, the dance would soon 
die a natural death. It would not seem worth 
the trouble of keeping it alive. I desire, how- 
ever, to make it distinctly understood, that to 
such hypothetical cases of dancing as have thus 
been described, the severe language which will 
follow, both in the text and in the notes, is not 
intended to apply. 

But at this point some one, beginning reluct- 
antly to feel the truth of my remarks, demurs, 
"What new asceticism have we here? The 
principle you imply would separate the sexes 
equally, in every other species of social inter- 
course. If mutual consciousness of sex is tlie 
circumstance which makes it immoral for men 



MOD EKN SOCIETY. 63 

and women to dance witli eacli other, then how 
is it not also immoral for them ever to talk with 
each other, since this tronblesome consciousness 
is likely at any moment to intervene between 
them ? Is it not rather the rational, and pre- 
eminently the Christian, philosophy of the rela- 
tion of man and woman that they should recog- 
nize and enjoy the exquisite sense of difference, 
put from the beginning between them to create 
the possibility of that transcendent affection 
whose 

dearest bond is tliis, 
Not like to like, but like in diflference. 

Is not this the common sense of the subject ? 

I certainly think that it is. And it is pre- 
cisely because I would guard this most delicate 
bloom of all human delight from the gross and 
common handling which soils its purity, that I 
use the language I do. Can we forget that it is 
the best use which is liable to the worst abuse ? 
Do we not know that the relation of the sexes, 
which was to have overflowed the world as a 
fountain of Paradise, has been perverted into 
the prolific cause of more crime and misery 



r»i THE DANCE OF , 

than any other single tiling that can be named ? 
And shall I not eiy shame upon a usage that, 
under cover of respectability, regularly titillates 
and tantalizes an animal appetite as insatiable 
as hunger, more cruel than revenge ? 

My accusation is that the dance, instead of 
affording an opportunity for mutually ennobling 
companionship between man and woman, in- 
spired with a chaste and sweet interfused re- 
membrance of their contrasted relationship to 
each other — that the dance, instead of tliis, 
consists substantially of a system of means con- 
trived with more than human ingenuity to ex- 
cite the instincts of sex to action, however 
subtle and disguised at the moment, in its sequel 
the most bestial and degrading. I charge that 
here, and not elsewhere, in the anatomy of that 
elusive fascination which belongs so peculiarly 
to the dance, the scalpel is laid upon the quiver- 
ing secret of life. Passion — passion transform- 
ed if you please never so much, subsisting in 
no matter how many j&nely contrasted degrees 
of sensuality — passion, and nothing else is the 
true basis of the popularity of the dance. 



MOD EKX SOCIETY. 65 

I slirink almost uncontrollably from this state- 
ment, now tliat I have made it ; and many times 
since I first assumed so bold a position I have 
been tempted to recede from it, overborne by tlie 
arguments, and stiU more by tlie sweet personal 
magnetism of friends of my own sex whose for- 
tunate individual exemption from infirmity dis- 
qualifies them from allowing that my views are 
other than Puritanic, or at least morally " dys- 
peptic." It is not pleasant to be a voice crying 
in the wilderness. Still less is it pleasant to be 
sent to JSTineveh on an errand of Jonah. I am 
so far influenced as to admit that there must be 
nimierous instances of exception to the general 
rule. But the general rule, and not the excep- 
tions, should detennine our line of conduct. It 
is a case so peculiar that the exceptions cannot 
safely be admitted even to exercise an influence 
in determining our line of conduct. On the 
other hand, too, I think it right to say that 
since the first publication of my views, I have 
received volunteer testimony from so many 
quarters, and from quarters representing such 
diametric diversity of moral and social charac« 



QG THE DANCE OF 

ter and position, corroborative of them from 
experience, that I find it impossible to qualify 
them now by a single degree. One man in 
particular, mj acquaintance with whom, com 
menced in the earliest boyhood, and uninter- 
rupted since, permits an unreserve of expression 
between us such as is seldom incident to later- 
formed acquaintanceship, has emphatically con- 
fessed to me his wonder that a ]3erson who never 
danced himself should have been able so plainly 
and fully to tell the truth about dancing. And 
no man knows what the wliole of the trutli 
about it is better than he. !Nor let it be sup- 
posed that I commit so vulgar an error as that of 
attaching undue weight to the testimony of one 
likely to have projected his own moral charac- 
ter upon the innocent companionship of his 
guilty pleasure. If it were proper to do sc, 
even in this anonymous way, I could cite an 
equally striking corroborative expression, con- 
veyed to me through an unquestionable medium, 
from one whom I never met, but who, at evert/ 
point, save common experience in dancing, is 
in the most antipodal contrast to the Antness 



MODERN SOC I KTV. 67 

just mentioned. I am forced to conclude that 
the devotees of the dance differ among them- 
selves, not so much in the influence received 
from participation in it as in their intelligent 
consciousness of that influence. 

It is no accident that the dance is wliat it is. 
It mingles the sexes in such closeness of person- 
al approach and contact as, outside of the dance, 
is nowhere tolerated in respectable society. It 
does this under a complexity of circumstances 
that conspire to heighten tlie impropriety of it. 
It is evening and the hour is late, there is the 
delicious intoxication of nm^ic and nK)lion,y>^r- 
Tia])s of wine ^ in tlie blood, there is the strange, 
confusing sense of being individually unob- 
served among so many, while yet the natural 
"noble shame," which guards the purity of man 
and woman alone together, is absent — sirjh ia 
the occasion, and still, hour after hour, the 
dance whirls its giddy kaleidoscope around, 
bringing hearts so near that they almost beat 
against each other, mixing the warm, mutual 
breaths, darting the fine personal electricity 
across between the meeting fingers, flushing the 



08 THE DANCE OF 

face and ligliting the ejes with a quick lan- 
guage, subject often to gross interpretations on 
the part of the vile-hearted — why, this fashion- 
able institution seems to me to have been in- 
vented in an unfriendly quarter, usually con- 
ceived of as situated imder us, to give oui- 
human passions leave to disport themselves, un- 
i-eproved by conscience, by reason, or by shame, 
almost at their will. I will not trust myself to 
speak of this further. My indignation waxes 
hotter than can well be controlled. I even 
seem to myself to have contracted some soil 
from having merely desciibed truthfully what 
thousands of fellow-Christians, ignorant of 
themselves, practice without swallowing a 
qualm !* 

* With the sincorest reluctance, I bring myself to sub- 
join a remark bearinj; on this point, once overheard on car- 
board by a friend of mine, in a conversation that was 
passing between two young men about their lady ac- 
quaintances. The horrible concreteness of the fellow's 
expression may give a wholesome recoil from their danger 
to some minds that would be little aflfected by a specula- 
tive statement of the same idea. Said one : " I would not 

give a straw to dance with Miss . You can't excite 

any more passion in her than you can in a stick of wood !" 



MODERN SOCIETY. 09 

I saj that the dance is not fortuitously such. 
It is such essentially. Its real nature is shown 
by what it constantly tends to become, in new 
figures, introduced stealthily, from time to time, 
(imder silent protest from many who suffer their 
modesty to be overborne by the fear of being 
charged M'ith prudery) a little more doubtful 
than the old, and in wanton whirls, like the 
waltz and the polka. Always the dance inclines 
to multiply opportunities of physical proximity 

Pure young women of a warmer temperament, that inno- 
cently abandon themselves to entlnisiastic proclamations 
of their de ight in the dance in the presence of gentle- 
men, shou'd but bare'y once have a male intuition of the 
meaning of the involuntary glance that will often shoot 
across from eye to eye among their auditors. Or they 
shou'd overhear the comments exchanged among them 
afterwards. For when young men meet after an evening 
of the dance to ta'k it over together, it is not points of 
dress they discuss. Their on'y demand, and it is gener- 
ally conceded, is that ladies' dress sliall not needlessly em- 
barrass suggestion. Believe me, however Avonien escape 
without the smell of fire upon their garments, men often 
do not get out of the furnace, save with a flame devouring 
them, that they seek strange fountains, and willingly 
damn their souls to quench. 

It tasks a resolutely firm nerve to speak thus of tilings 
that braze it out before the world and the church, only foj 
want of being thus spoken of. 



70 THE DANCE OF 

and contact between the sexes, always to make 
tliem more prolonged and more daring. In 
fine, tbe dance adds that last ingredient of per- 
fect bliss, whose absence the witty French- 
woman bethought herself, in the midst of some 
innocent enjoyment, to monrn — with a pathos 
more pathetic than they dream who see nothing 
but a whimsical humor in the saying — " Mon 
Dieu ! how delightful this is ! It would be 
quite perfect, if there were only a little sin 
in it." 

But if what has already been said and sug- 
gested fails to convince any that my analysis 
of the pleasure of the dance is true, I have a 
little problem to propose for their solution : 
Why is it that the dance alone, of all the favor- 
ite diversions of goAj society , requires the asso- 
ciation of the two sexes in it f The problem is 
not solved by the ready re]4y, " Why, the 
pleasure of social intercourse is always height- 
ened when both sexes participate in it. We 
enjoy an evening of cards the better for this 
piquant commingling !" But you have missed 
the point of the problem. The question is not, 



MODE EN SOCIETY. 71 

Why do you enjoy the dance more when men 
and women execute it together? but, "Wliy must 
men and women execute it together in order tliat 
they should enjoy it at all ? No doubt a game of 
cards may be much more bewitching, while not 
an iota more hurtful, for the meeting of the 
sexes at the table. But then cheaply figured 
parallelograms of paste-board have charms for 
their devotees of either sex, which enable them 
to dispense with the society of the other. Men, 
young and old, often sit the night out in bach- 
elor conviviality around a card-table. Young 
ladies, and sometimes their mammas with them, 
I believe, will interminably shuffle and deal 
far on into the hours affectionately called 
" small " by those who know how to make them 
seem so with revel — all quite without the com- 
pany of gentlemen. Eut come to the dance — 
and what a difference ! Where do young ladieg 
keep up their practice of calisthenics after leav- 
ino- boardino;-school ? What bachelor club ex- 
ists anywhere that devotes an evening to the 
dance among its members ? Pensive and imag- 
inative young ladies might possibly, here and 



72 THEDANCEOr 

there, of a lonesome evening, seet to revive a 
diluted illusion of past pleasure, by a few strict- 
ly maiden measures executed with soon ex- 
hausted enthusiasm, but men with men — hardly ! 
— ^unless perhaps in broad farce to point a 
whimsical contrast. With reference to such 
a style of dancing at least, the pagan sarcasm 
of Cicero is likely long to retain a Cliristian 
application — Nemo fere saltat sobrius^ nisi 
forte insanit. 

The characteristic thus established as belong- 
ing to the dance, in distinction from every other 
form of popular amusement^ is full of instruct- 
ive implication to those who are accustomed to 
inquire for the causes of things. Of course I 
know how indignantly the accusation of impur- 
ity in their enjoyment of the dance will be re- 
pelled by the great majority of its votaries. 
And I am very ready to admit the indignation 
as entirely honest ; for I have no doubt that the 
element of unchastity in it, rarely absent in 
Bome more or less refined quality of influence, 
I most certainly believe, is yet generally unrec- 
ognized by the subject. If only unconscious- 



MODERN SOCIETY. 73 

ness of evil influence were a trustworthy pro- 
phylactic against it I Once again, and for all, 
I protest with the utmost sincerity that I am 
far from confounding the devotees of the dance 
in an indiscriminate accusation of conscious im- 
purity. I know too many pure-hearted women 
among dancers, whom no fortunate eon, or 
brother, or husband, could possibly charge with 
one doubtful thought, for even an instant of the 
most oblivious excitement, not to be myself indig- 
nant in pm-ging my intention of any such cruel 
injustice. And in the opposite sex, too^ how- 
ever much more exposed by nature to tempta- 
tion, there are some dancers no doubt who come 
very near to escaping the conscious contagion 
of evil, by virtue of an instinctive chastity in 
them, God's gift to a few. But, right on the 
heels of so wide a disclaimer, I must re-assert 
my conviction that unconsciousness does not de- 
fend even the purest minds from something of 
the insinuating sensual tendency of this inher- 
ently voluptuous amusement. 

And then consider, ye Christian fathers, and 
brothers, and husbands, to what homble haz- 



Ti THE DANCE OF 

ardij of contact the opportui ities cf the danoe 
expose your daughters, and sisters, and wiveB. 
For ■who, that has gained any experience of the 
world, is ignorant of the fact that hardly once 
does a considerable party assemhle, even in the 
most respectable society, without including some 
man whom his associates know to be a libertine 
at heart, if not in lile? To think of pure 
women pastured on, with ]>alms of pollution, 
and with imminent eyes of adultery, by such a 
bull of Bashan, the evening long, in the promis- 
cuous corral of the dance ! What better facil- 
ities could be imagined for an accomplished 
voluptuaiy to compass the capture of his 
prey !" 



* I sliall never lose the impressioa made years ago 
upon my mind, in the chances of western travel by pack- 
et on the canal, by hearing a practised libertine relate his 
experience in the arts of female seduction. His master 
secret lay, as he said with horrid complacency, in accus- 
toming his quarry to the touch of his hands, and espec- 
ially to the shock of being kissed. In this way, to use 
his own brutal expression, he " tamed" the selected vic- 
tims of his villany. 

This volume may possibly penetrate to some secluded 
iU)ok in the country where a superstitious horror, onca 
re'igious. still bears sway against the dance, while yet a 



MODERN SOCIETY. 75 

Faugh ! In the ordinary occasions of society, a 
lady may let her sacred intuitions have some 
play to guard her against the access of impur- 
ity in the imifoinn of a gentleman. But it is 
the boast of the dance that it is a democrat and 
a leveller, permitting no individual caprice to 
break the circuit of universal equality. You 
may shudder to your heart's core at the contact 
that is coming — ^but the dance leaves you no 
election — you must take it when it comes 
Blush, blush henceforth ye Christian women, 
when you are invited to submit your persons to 
the uses of a diversion that may at any time 
choose to bring you finger-tip to finger-tip with 
those whose touch is pollution, or, it may be, en- 
circle you in their arms ! A burning blush of 
speechless shame were the best reply to the in- 
sult of such an invitation. But I plead against 
an advocate more eloquent than any individu- 
al's words. Oh, Fashion! Fasliion! "What 

variety of "kissing" plays are practised in its stead. In a 
case of social demoralization like this, we could iniagino 
how the dance might serve a really useful turn, if intro- 
duced as a temporary stage of progress towards ultimate 
more thorough reform ! 



7G THEDANCEOF 

power hast thou to browbeat holy nature, bo 
that she dares not speak to assert her sacred 
claims against thj imperious sway I 

I abruptly dispatch this hateful subject with- 
out completing the discussion of it. If my 
readers have winced at the exceptional plaiii- 
ness of speech which I have used, I beg them 
to believe that it has cost me sincere pangs of 
resolution to use it. But I have written under 
duress of conscience that did not suffer me to 
shrink. The engineering skill of the devil has 
defended the dance with a masterly dilemma 
that leaves open barely two alternatives of at- 
tack about equally ineligible. You may either 
exhaust your strength in demonstrating the 
minor and incidental evils of the usage, in 
which case you win an easy, but also a barren 
victory ; or you rSust freely encounter the peril 
of damaging your own fair fame for purity, 
and deliver your blow full at its inherent and 
essential immorality. The author has deliber- 
ately chosen the latter alternative. He can trust 
the honest heat of indignation that has warmed 
his words to take away the offence of their ex- 



MODERN SOCIETY. 77 

ti'eme fidelity. As for the risk of being charged 
with bringing the impurity that he finds — ho 
contentedly accepts it. It is a charge that two 
classes of persons certainly wiU not prefer. 
These two classess are, first, those who know 
him, and secondly, those who know themselves. 



Lord Byron was not a severe moralist, either 
va theory or in practice. He perhaps did not 
himself waltz. But he was a man of like pas- 
sions with his kind, and be knew well enon^i'h 
what the waltz essentially was. Will any puro- 
hearted woman be found willing, after reading 
the lines tbat follow, to share a dance of wbic-h 
such lines could be written bv the autbor of 



78 THE DAXCE OF MODERN SOCIETY. 

Don Juan i 1 take them from Byron's poem 
entitled " The Waltz : An Apostrophic Hymn": 

" Round all the confines of tbe yielded waist, 
The strangest hand may wander undisplaced ; 

Thus all and each, in movement swift or slow, 
Tbe genial contact gently undergo ; 
Till some might marvel, with the modest Turk, 
If ' nothing follows all this palming work ' ? 
True, honest Mirza!— you may trust my rhyme — 
Something does follow, at a fitter time ; 
The breast thus publicly resign'd to man, 
In private may resist him — if it can. 

" Pronounce— if ever in your days of bliss 
Asmodeus struck so briglit a stroke as this ; 
To teach the young ideas how to rise, 
Flush in the cheek, and languish in the eyes ; 
Rush to the heart, and lighten through the frame, 
With half-told wish and ill-dis-sembled flame. 
For prurient nature still will storm the breast — 
Who, tempted thus, can answer for the rest? 

" But ye — who never felt a single thought 
For what our morals are to be, or ought ; 
Who wisely wish the cbarms you view to reap, 
Say — would you make those beauties quite so cheap? 
Hot from the hands promiscuously applied, 
Round the slii^ht waist, or down the glowing side, 
Where were the rapture then to clasp the form. 
From this lewd grasp and lawless contact warm?" 



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