THE UNIVERSITY 
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THE 
 
 Dance of Modern Society 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. 
 
 FEB 2 0 1911 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 
 i8 AND 20 AsTOR Place. 
 
 1889. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, bj 
 Funk & Wagnalls, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 0) 
 
 Since first propounding, 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, conscience, and my 
 heart on the subject discussed. The particular 
 occasion, I may sa^^, 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 quadrille — 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 of 
 the lady by her partner with hio arms thrown 
 about her. A friena of mine, a gentleman 
 possessing the finest social qualities and com- 
 manding the best social position, remonstiated 
 with me once atjainst what he felt to be the too 
 
 595645 
 
4 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 great strictness of my teachings on the subject 
 of the Dance. I listened to hiin silently, with 
 the sincerest respect, while he insisted that 
 square dances were different enough from round 
 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 regretfully to say, "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 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 1 PROPOSE an unusual compliment to the 
 Dance — I propose to discuss it I cheerfully 
 lend it dignity for the purpose. I pledge my- 
 self, besides, to put it permanently beyond 
 the need of borrowing again. For I shall be 
 able, I believe, to vindicate for it a dignity all 
 its own — the dignity of being exceedingly evil 
 — a dignity which, however modestly worn, I 
 think that it possesses in a degree commensurate 
 with the magnitude of its littleness in every 
 other respect. 
 
 I purpose, then, to discuss the Dance as prac- 
 tised in modem society. I purpose to discuss 
 it tamestly, but temperately, with strong con- 
 viction certainly, but without unreasonable pre- 
 judice, and in a manner not to violate the deco- 
 rum of a sincere personal respect toward those 
 who agree with me in zeal for good morality, 
 
 (5) 
 
8 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 but differ with me in opinion upon the present 
 topic. 
 
 I do not, it will be seen, affect the 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 oflBce 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 p'rouette, and go tilting out of court, 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 7 
 
 free to take her chances of li\diig down, as best 
 she 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 church. 
 
 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 social in* 
 
8 
 
 IIIE DANCE 01 
 
 Btitution that has grown to a really overshadow* 
 iag greatness among us almost imperceived, 
 simply by the policy of maintaining always, 
 with a persistent laugh, that it was quite too 
 small to merit a serious word. I have a serious 
 w^ord, notwithstanding, to say, and I am willing 
 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 devil, and submit to waste their 
 earnestness in p tiful casuistry upon points of 
 what ? and when ? and where ? and how much I 
 and how ? in the art of amusement, whence, one 
 
MODERIJ^^ SOCIETY. 
 
 9 
 
 miglit implore to know, are we to hope for the 
 voice that shall re-animate an abject and ololiv- 
 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 
 imappeasably for amusement are precisely that 
 class of persons who need amusement least. 
 They are the cloyed, the sated, sons and daugh- 
 ters of pleasure, 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. What 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 canse, not in their 
 own, for that novel and delicious tingle of 
 pleasure which they had been awaiting and 
 
THE DANCE OF 
 
 iiivoidng so long. How crass the folly of try- 
 ing to satisfy these morbid seekers after amuse- 
 menl 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 Ak3sociations of the country to enter the 
 field of competition to purvey amusement, ay if 
 for this very class of minds. The plan would 
 be to emich the variety of entertainment that 
 now invitbS the young to an evening of rational 
 enjoyment in their hospitable rooms, by adding 
 facilities for games, such as backgammon, 
 draughts, cheers, billiards, perhaps cards. It 
 would prove, I cannot but believe, a hazardous 
 career of experment. Our Christian Associa- 
 tions cannot afford to transform themselves into 
 clubs, clubs differing from the ordinary sort 
 only in being conducted on quasi-charitable 
 principles. 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. 
 
 11 
 
 urgency tl>at has impelled them toward danger- 
 ous extremes in the new direction. It is most 
 earnestly to be hoped that a wise conservatism 
 will cLiitinue to be the spirit that rales 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. Tlie theory of it I 
 believe is a false theory ; but if the theory of it 
 were true, the practical realization of the theory 
 is beset with innumerable, and, in my opinion, 
 quite insurmountable, difficulties. Our senti- 
 mental times mistake in supposing that evil can 
 be induced to shade ofi* into good by insensible 
 degrees. Ton 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 
 mother's tearful warning against it behind their 
 backs, in the conceit of a more modem Chris- 
 tian wisdom to be had in the city. It will be 
 four.d 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- 
 stairs 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 viitue 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 
 
 ncss and half honest indignation, against fol- 
 lowing lures 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 heaiiily 
 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 Une of moral sentiment respecting 
 
14 
 
 THE DANOE OP 
 
 all forms ol hnmaii self-indulgeiice and materia] 
 enjoyment. But in the second place, it is an 
 incident of our nineteenth century civilization 
 that we live intensely. Everybody is in a 
 chronic state of hurry. This highly stimulated 
 rate of living takes reprisals upon our vitahty, 
 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. Om^ men of letters, as the most 
 sensitive children of civilization, are perhaps 
 the severest sufferers by the prevalent unnatu- 
 ral velocity of li\dng. 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 vitaKty, and 
 should most credulously hail whatever remedy 
 presents itself to their demand. 
 
 Now I sympathize vividly with all my liter- 
 ary brethren in the sense of bodily prostration 
 which follows intellftctual toil. I know as weU 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 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 marroWj in 
 the body, and leave the whole man a-quiver 
 with intense and fine exhaustion. I have known 
 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 the 
 conscious 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 unconquered 
 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 rioral and physical bUinder 
 
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 periodical 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 havoc done to the 
 body by the starved brain in its voracious for- 
 ages for food. 
 
 Literary men are not long 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 
 wiU find it set down in the " Blithedale Eo- 
 mance." Hawthorne found that Arcadia and 
 ^Lttica were very distinct provinces. He says 
 that when muscle worked, brain would not^ 
 This, I take it, is the invariable experience of 
 
MODERN SOCIETT. 
 
 17 
 
 every literary man. The consequence is tJiat 
 the athletic sports, which are praised by 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 ? No 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. IS 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 
 sopoiifics 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 just after 
 winding. There is nothing to reserve and regu- 
 late his expenditure of vitality. He is continu- 
 ously and rapidly, he may be helplessly, running 
 down. We are in urgent need of a new liter- 
 ary period. It should be one eulogistic of eest. 
 
 Of all the absurd 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 un-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 revenge upon 
 \tiiem now for having been praised so long, 
 Tliey wore a grave order of great souls, whoso 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 19 
 
 faults, like their virtuesj 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 unhappily it did also lead to 
 some discomfort, and even suffering, for others. 
 Their figure in history is large enough, and 
 unique enough, to make them an inviting target 
 for the small archery of the witlings of our 
 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- 
 ture them with more than ci e of his polished 
 stiletto antitheses, in his History of England. 
 (Hardly any of those brilliant surprises of style, 
 rwhich constitute at once the strength ^nd the 
 Weakness of this great maater of composition, 
 nas enjoyed a more popular fame than the ver- 
 bal lasso which he let fly at the Puritans, when 
 he said that they hated bear-baiting, not be- 
 cause i^ gave pain to the bears, but because it 
 
20 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 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 spectators ? Was not that the demoral- 
 izing element in the sport ? And were not the 
 Purit ms 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 Puri- 
 tans on the Lord's day, when the sport was at its height. 
 It might, to be sure, be plausibly maiiitained, 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 demou^'/iate it. 
 
MODERN SOCIETY* 
 
 21 
 
 Our modem festive -^dsdom is far too self- 
 complacent. It is not certain, after all, that tlie 
 Puritans were not nearer the 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 tha i their jovial descfioidants. 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 JSTouveau 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 interests. 
 
 In the first place it is hardly necessary to say 
 
22 
 
 THE DANCE OP 
 
 that dancing, in itself, is perfectly innocent. 
 No one denies tliis. It is as liannless 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 speak. I do not restrict my 
 argument or my conclusion to balls or public 
 assemblies. " I should waste my zeal. I'here 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 still to soil om* 
 Bocial 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 ds'nce. 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 2S 
 
 Nor yet do I restrict my argument, or ray 
 conclusion, to those rhythmic gyrations popularly 
 called " round dances." A popular magazine 
 never distinguished for martyrdom to principle, 
 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 T name the dance (for the sake of being 
 perfectly understood, I may say) I mean the 
 dance as many of the most respectable members 
 of society, including no inconsiderable propor- 
 tion of accepted Christians, not unfrequently 
 practice it. I am thus frank, not for the sake 
 of seeming boldj but for the sake of being clear. 
 My readers need none of them be at any loss as 
 to just what I mean. I mean the dance as it 
 flourishes in the most proper and reputable cir- 
 cles to-day. 
 
 For the sake of perspicuity and convenience 
 T shall pursue the present investigation into the 
 propriety of the dance, under the following 
 general topics. The division wiH, I trust, be 
 found sufficiently common-place and obvious. 
 
24 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 I. The bearing of the dance upon the 
 Health ; 
 
 II. Its relation to Economy ; 
 III. Its Social Tendency ; 
 lY. Its Influence upon Intellectual Improve 
 ment ; 
 
 V. Its Moral or Eeligious 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 aU the rest. 
 
 I. What bearing does the dance, as it exists 
 among us, have upon the health ? An amuse- 
 ment ought at least to be harmless in its hygi- 
 enic effects. If it does not build up, 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, 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 25 
 
 at rational hours of the day, for a rational length 
 of time, scarcely to exceed say an hour, those 
 participating in it being suitably attired to 
 permit the freest play of the lungs — these 
 and other Kke conditions fulfilled, and the 
 dance, no doubt, might make good a claim to be 
 ranked as a healthful diversion. There would 
 stiU remain other points of importance 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 term, 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 three o'clock in 
 the morning, interrupted by a sumptuous mid- 
 night feast, ah with an in-door atmosphere, 
 doubly heated and doubly corrupted by fires 
 
26 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 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 everything like nat- 
 uralness 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 clothing, 
 to the risks of rheumatism, neuralgia, colds, 
 catarrhs, consumption ? What, I ask, would be 
 thought of a gymnasimn 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 
 public-spirited 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 position, 
 as yoke-fehow to the pulpit in the inculcation 
 
MODEKN SOCIETY. 
 
 27 
 
 of virtue, 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 advancing the 
 standard of the general health. Otherwise, the 
 two projects are such natural twins they would 
 appropriately be entrusted to the same hands 
 ff^r execution. 
 
 We witnessed a few years ago a brilliant re- 
 vival of the pure drama in our metropolis, A 
 man of genius, and a man of character as was 
 supposed, the heir of rare ancestral histrionic 
 fame, achieved more than one man perhaps 
 ev^er before achieved fvSr 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 the drama again. The success seemed 
 at first to confirm tlie 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 rants 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 
 w^hat they have striven in vain to abolish. For 
 this is the flattering hope with which Christian 
 people have long been allured to the counte- 
 
 I nancing of the theatre. They have been told 
 that by resolutely refusing to attend the theatre, 
 they have, in eflfect, dej^rived it of that conserv- 
 
 \ ative influence which it was in their power to 
 exert, and which was necessary to keep it from 
 
 J degenerating to the level of its more degraded 
 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. Ilayne, if a thing is 
 to be done, an ingenious man can tell how it is 
 to be done Let us §^e how the stage is to be 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 29 
 
 regenerated by Christian patronage of tlie stage. 
 Managers, of course, conduct tLeir operations 
 with a thrifty eye to the avoidance of deficits 
 at the end of the season. They aim to please 
 theii 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 
 numbers enough, to compose a preponderating 
 proportion of the attendance. IsTow, the Prot- 
 estant Christians of New York number, by 
 probable computation, about a hundred thousand 
 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. Rather a slender minority to dictate 
 the character of the representations. But on 
 certain evenings of the week obedience to their 
 Master, in ? 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 for 
 prayer that their zeal in purifying 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 down the moral standard to 
 the taste of " the general " — would the gain be 
 great ? Or if, for the sake of making their in- 
 fluence more sensible, Christians should concen- 
 trate their patronage upon some one theatre, 
 and should succeed in rendering that unexcep- 
 tionable, is it certain that ten other theatres 
 would not spring up to supply the star^dng 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 intellectual facilities of 
 the community, but it would not be one infin- 
 itesimal degree of progress towai^d any substati- 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 31 
 
 tial moral reform. As a matter of present ob- 
 servation, did the great dramatic revival pre- 
 vent a bottomless degradation of the stage ? 
 
 The close kinship between the subject of the 
 theatre and the subject of the dance, at jnst 
 this point, makes it no digression to have spoken 
 at such length of the theatre. Chi'istian 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 willful but good-hearted little 
 jade would be charmed quite out of her frolic 
 perverseness, and would settle down into a^ 
 prim and proper a damsel as any reasonable 
 person could desire. But 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 
 
82 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 the legitimate articles. It would certainly be 
 one of the most strildng 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 brethren, with a sprinkling 
 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 hke 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 indirectly, charge- 
 able with producing more of the ill-health, 
 which, destroying the Life-long comfort of our 
 wives, our sisters, and our mothers, is steadily 
 diluting and coiTupting. at its source the blood 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 33 
 
 of our civiKzation. 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- 
 tacle 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 bhss. 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, papei soled shoes — in 
 short, a good number 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, small waists, to 
 render the female foim as insect'like as possible, 
 
34 
 
 THE DANCE DF 
 
 that it may resemble some imaginary sylph^ 
 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 off the dance — Fashion 
 decrees it and — women adopt it. Thus much for 
 the dance as a matter of health. There will 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 
 even a more serious degree. For the dance is 
 not without vital relation to that vice which 
 ever and anon forces itself into discussion 
 under the euphemism of the " Social Can- 
 cer." The spirit of fairness of course obliges 
 me to admit that the extravagances named as 
 attaching to the chance are not always carried to 
 equal lengths. 
 
 II. I am next to consider the dance as It 
 bears upon the matter of Expenditure. This ia 
 certainly a subordinate view of the subject, but 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 35 
 
 it is one nevertheless sufficiently ii aportant to 
 deserve a moment's attention. No 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, effect to the eye. Everything that can 
 contribute to enhance this scenic effect is 
 sought for with eager ingenuity. The more 
 splendid the saloon, the more sumptuous tho 
 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 com})etition in lavishness of expendi- 
 ture, starting from high places of fashion, travels 
 
36 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 outward and downward, through every quartei 
 of Christendom, (the unavoidable irony of the 
 word !) and through every grade of society. It 
 :x3nds to impoverish every noble human need to 
 enrich the 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 wTiting 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 — 
 I 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 corres])ond- 
 ence and buzzes about in ladies' small talk, 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 37 
 
 antil attention is absorbed again in still more 
 extravagant prepara^tion for the next magnifi- 
 cent affair. 
 
 ^ Society ' has its ' Court Gazettes ' in our re- 
 publican metropolis, in which the student of our 
 social manners may read daily or weekly ad 
 nauseam^ 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 column of extremely personal gossij), 
 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, graceftdly 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 prophet- w^arning to New York about 
 out-Paris-ing Paris ? 
 
 It may be said tliat these excesses, w^hich no- 
 body will deny, are not confined to the occasioa 
 
38 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 of the dance. And it must be admitted that in 
 truth they are not. They are equally incident 
 to every so-called amusement that consists 
 mainly in making up a spectacle. 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 tlie inter- 
 est of simplicity and virtue in pubhc manners, 
 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 
 
MODEKN Sl)CIETY. 
 
 39 
 
 triJie less exquisitely ridiculous than those of the 
 style which has just superseded them ! I may 
 be wroug, 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 d^oeuvre 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, rather than as the heiress of a priceless 
 heart, and of a beautiful and beautified mind i 
 — the dance being such has largely contributed' 
 to the creation of that meretricious taste in 
 dress wliich seriously threatens, through its di- 
 rect and indirect economic influence, to corrupt 
 and (Jeteriorate the very basis of our American 
 society. True it is that the comparatively un- 
 pretending and innocent dancing parties, which 
 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 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 j one. All rivers run to the sea. These smaller 
 f assemblies are feeders to the larger. And the 
 \law issues from the ball-room to the private 
 I parlor, just as to private theatricals the law de- 
 ( scends from the more elaborate scenic display 
 p{ 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 our 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 SOCIETT. 
 
 41 
 
 Bcopic grace, to music, an exemplification of 
 human social life. If we needs must have a 
 stock epithet to characterize the thing, better 
 call the dance a gregarious amusement, and 
 leave tlie nobler adjectiv^e for consecration to a 
 foiTQ of human intercourse in which speech 
 plays some part to distinguish it from the mass- 
 ing together of a jostling crowd of mute or 
 merely gibbering animals. 
 
 Am I unfair to the dance ? No doubt the 
 view of it which I am presenting may be novel 
 to those easily contented, because unreflecting, 
 minds who mllingly resign themselves to be 
 cheated \vith 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 behes it, and scan it once in its 
 nakedness, and if it does not appear as grim a 
 sham, for an exercise of the social nature, as 
 ever imposed upon intelKgent men and women 
 — why then I must confess myself to have mis- 
 conceived the truth concerning what social en- 
 joyment for the human race should be. 
 
42 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 JSTv^fc long ago, at a dancing party, it was re- 
 marked by a lady, herself I believe a participant 
 in tlie 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 knomng 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 poKticians. Not all have 
 Talleyrand's art to reahze his definition 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 
 traditionaUy 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. 
 
MODERN SJCIETY. 
 
 43 
 
 statesmen is an institution Kke the dance, wliich 
 shall enable them to gratify society by conde- 
 scending to be social, without running the risk 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 with which the want of external 
 poKsh 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 Hberal views of worldly con- 
 formity were easier to entertain, capitulated to 
 this temptation, and suffered his children to go 
 where the dancino- master mio-ht soften the nat- 
 
 o o 
 
 ural angularity of their movements into th© 
 flowing curves said to approximate more nearly 
 to the ideal of perfect grace. Alas, alas I Does 
 not even the poet teach the Christian teacher a 
 deeper lesson than that ? 
 
THE DANCE OF 
 
 For manners are not idle, out the fruit 
 Of 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 life-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 courtesy in his epistles — 
 jwho has ever considered the transformation that 
 /had passed upon this man in the school of 
 Christ, making the Galilean the cosmopoHte, 
 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 ? 
 
MODEEN SOCIETY. 
 
 45 
 
 Wliile something nevei-theless, may in fairneBS 
 be conceded liere to the dance, a very httle ol> 
 Bervation accompanied with a very little re- 
 flection vnll, I think, suffice 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 morahty enjoins upon us all as politeness, 
 or even to create that affectation of this, which 
 we are all of us so well content to accept in- 
 stead of poHteness. 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 neutral 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 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 arrogant self-assertion of the dance. It awes 
 one — it takes away one's breath — one .^s uncer- 
 tam for a moment or two in its presence whether 
 his first principles of courtesy and good breed- 
 ing may not, by some hocus-pocnSj have got ex- 
 actly reversed without his being aware of it. 
 This social amusement flouts you with such 
 utterly pitiless, such Gorgonizing insolence, 
 Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes, 
 
 — if you happen to get into its way! Until 
 you recover your self-possession, you rather be- 
 hove 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 Robert Hall describes as seeming by his 
 manner to be asking pardon of everybody for 
 taking the Hberty 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 
 
 the house that is open to guests. Happy then 
 the mortals who do not dance, if they can find 
 a secure retreat in hall or entry. Those who 
 shrink into corners, and those who desperately 
 cling to the walls, shall not escape a whisk of 
 the tumultuous dress, 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 wondei 
 of a Celestial on the spectacle of the dance as 
 exhibited by a company of Europeans, betrayed 
 his innocent ignorance of the real fascination 
 of the thing, but he certainly discovered its 
 utter hollowness, 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's company ; — giving conversation 
 forsooth such a launch that it is dispensed with 
 from that moment forward — is this two-fold 
 fact, admitted, a fair offset to the gi*oss, the 
 
48 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 e^egioTis ill-manners upon which 1 haT e com- 
 naonted ? 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 virtu- 
 ally making two parties at once. 
 
 I remember hearing the celebrated M. Bau- 
 tain, in one of his lectiu*es 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 ap- 
 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 nothmg about the lecturer 
 himself seemed to protest along with his words, 
 except his interdictory quality of Eomish 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 arms, and enveloping them in a 
 haze of oblivious torpor — had chilled the genial 
 
MODERX SOCIETY. 
 
 49 
 
 currents of that conversational enthusiasm 
 which 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 aesthetics, 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 ]\t 
 Bautain spoken from the point of view of av- 
 erage American society, he would have been 
 nearer the truth in representing conversation, as 
 a diifused and popular accomplishment, to be 
 m danger of extinction from the usurping do- 
 minion of the dance. 
 
 IV. I have now, in immediate sequence to 
 the foregoing, to investigate the influence of the 
 dance on th 3 Intellectual Improvement of Soci^- 
 Cfty. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 Chir American life is, from the virtual com- 
 pulsion of circumstances, so much absorbed in 
 attention to material interests that as a people 
 we have little time, at tiie 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 Hves. 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 hke these, to 
 our mutual profiting, should be recklessly squan- 
 dered upon a laborious bodily exercise, in which 
 monkeys might be trained to display greater 
 agihty 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 ofi* well 
 without the dance ! IIow much mental vacuity 
 —what aching and echoing cranial room for 
 knowledge — does such a ( onfession imply 1 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 51 
 
 Oh, young men ! Oh, yc/ung women ! Ame- 
 rican brothers and sisters, say, — would it not be 
 better if yon 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 literary periodicals (but 
 you will have to wait now until you lecome a 
 public fit to support them, before you can find 
 many very good at home) — if you should or- 
 ganize reading-clubs, and amateur art associa- 
 tions — in short, if you should spend a share at 
 least of the time and of the money that you 
 can command, in acquunng 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 should 
 not be able to think of anything to say, to re- 
 lieve the awkardness of silence? I am met 
 with,j " 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 DAXCE OF 
 
 wliO refrain from dancing are not obKged to 
 alander their neighbors. There is conversation 
 which neither abuses the absent, nor yet in- 
 jures the participants in it. But the art of 
 Buch 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 want 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. Now how 
 many of onr 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 tlie place of conversation, will not elaun 
 to be of the number. No; the people who 
 compose society are rather, if they but knew it, 
 fairly tired to death with everlasting 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 tliat should bring their languishing minds 
 into action. And then the clerks, for example, ' 
 who are on their feet all day, in a confined at- 
 mospliere — 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 healtli 
 as is exercise of the body. 
 
 But I have said enough on these minor 
 topics of my discussion. The chief topic still 
 remains to be discussed. I have expressed my* 
 
54 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 self with severity; but my readers will surely 
 Buffer me to be a little out of humor with a 
 usurpation, which tyrannizes to such disastrous 
 purpose, over so fair a realm of human life. 
 
 V. 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 proper amusement for the world, it 
 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 likewise 
 morally suitable for the minister who preaches 
 the sermon, to dance at his side. The question 
 remains now to be considered, 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 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 55 
 
 tlie opportunities of intellectual improven.ent, 
 tlie rejoinder is commonly made that at least it 
 is in itself an innocent, if not a useful way of 
 spen ding 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 fatigue. 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 sure, that you have not whole- 
 some earnestness enough, in some worthy direc- 
 tion, to make the frivolity distasteful ; but if you 
 have not, then there is probably nothing better 
 for you, than to resemble those natives on the 
 toast of Africa, of whom it is related that they 
 begged their musical European visitor to cease 
 fiddling, lest they perforce danced themselves i 
 to death. But is the dance morally unobjec- 
 tionable ? 
 
56 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 I have, it is true, in part forestalled my reply. 
 For it would be strictly legitimate to enlarge 
 on the vicious tendencies always engendered by 
 such 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-buming, 
 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 free- 
 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, thai 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 57 
 
 though they move my feeling to the highest 
 pitch of moral indignation, I nevertheless must 
 pick my expressions with the utmost care, lest 
 I offend the decorum which the chaste spirit 0/ 
 Christian refinement has taught us to observK^ 
 and to demand in speech. There is an infinite 
 slough of pollution, but scantily crusted over, 
 under your feet now, whichever way you turn,. 
 
 Incedis per io^nes 
 Suppositos ciiaeri doloso. 
 
 Alas, that the fatal faux pas^ which lets the 
 adventurer down, is so much more frequently 
 taken in the actual experience of Kfe, 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 with accidents^ 
 
58 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 say ratlier a substance whose essence consists in 
 its accidents — a social institution, well-deter- 
 mined in form, and liitherto as persistent as 
 force — or as sin — I am dealing with the dance. 
 Now 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 which 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 beat 
 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 SOCIETY. 
 
 59 
 
 the ground they beat, and not a floor, much less 
 a carpeted floor.) I should have no objection 
 to a dance in which 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 liouse- 
 liold, and the parents and grandparents, 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 hiunan nature continues such that these 
 marry and are given in marriage with each 
 other. These might, to be sure, be present and 
 witness the Terpsichorean performances of the 
 family ; but I am afraid that the mere spectacle 
 of such domestic fehcity would be voted a 
 rather tame entertainment. In fact, such is 
 human depravity, I have my misgi\dngs that 
 the older brothers and sisters of the household 
 
60 
 
 THE DANCE OP 
 
 would almost as lief go back to their Sunda^y- 
 school as to engage in so entirely innocent a 
 diversion. 
 
 Upon condition that the prevaihng 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 tlie 
 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, tliat beyond 
 these liraits 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 youi 
 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 flying 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 
 while 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 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 door neighbors are always the best of neigh- 
 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 difficult 
 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 the 
 circumstance which makes it immoral for men 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 63 
 
 and women to dance with each other, then how 
 is it not also immoral for them ever to talk with 
 each other, since this troublesome 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 fi'om the beginning between them to create 
 the possibility of that transcendent affection 
 whose 
 
 dearest bond is this, 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 
 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 dehcate 
 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 miserj^ 
 
64 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 thai . any other single thing that can be named \ 
 And shall I not cry shame upon a usa^e that, 
 under cover of respectability, regularly titillates 
 and tantalizes an animal appetite as insatiable 
 as hmiger, more cruel than revenge ? 
 
 My accusation is that the dance, instead of 
 affording an opportunity for mutually ennobli^ig 
 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 this, 
 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 finely contrasted degrees 
 \ of sensuality — passion, and nothing else is tho 
 \jrue basis of the popularity of the dance. 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 65 
 
 I shiiiik almost uncontrollably from this state- 
 ment, now that 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 the 
 aj'guments, and still more by the 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 Pmitanic, 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 Nineveh on an errand of Jonah. I am 
 60 far influenced as to admit that there must be 
 numerous instances of exception to the general 
 rule. But tlie general rule, and not the excep- 
 tions, should determine 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 diversitv of moral and social charao- 
 6 
 
66 
 
 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, my 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 person who never 
 danced himself should have been able so plainly 
 and fully to tell the truth about dancing. And 
 no man knows what the whole of the truth 
 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 so, 
 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 eve^n/ 
 pointy save common experience in dancing, is 
 in the most antipodal contrast to the witness 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 67 
 
 just nientioned. 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 what 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 the impropriety of it. 
 It is evening and the hour is late, there is the 
 delicious intoxication of music and motion, ^^r- 
 haps of wine, in the 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 — such ib 
 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 
 
68 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 face and lighting the eyes 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 under us, to give our 
 human passions leave to disport themselves, un- 
 reproved 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 w^ell be controlled, I even 
 seem to myself to have contracted some soil 
 from having merely described truthfully what 
 thousands of fellow-Christians, ignorant of 
 themselves, practice without swallowing a 
 qualm !* 
 
 * Witli fhe sincerest reluctance, I bring myself to sub- 
 join a remark bearing 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 affected 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 ir her than you can in a stick of wood !" 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 69 
 
 I say 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, 
 (under silent protest from many who suffer their 
 modesty to be overborne by the fear of being 
 charged with prudery) a little more doubtfid 
 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 enthusiastic proclamations 
 of their de ight in the dance in the presence of gentle- 
 men, shou'd but barely 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 
 ehou'd overhear the comments exchanged among them 
 afterwards. For when young men meet after an evening 
 of the dance to talk 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 shall not needlessly em- 
 \ barrass suggestion. Believe me, however women 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 things 
 that braze it out before the world and the church, only foi 
 want of ])eing thus spoken of. 
 
70 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 and contact between the sexes, always to make 
 tliem more prolonged and more daring. In 
 fine, the dance adds that last ingredient of per- 
 fect bliss, w^hose absence the witty French- 
 woman bethought herself, in the midst of some 
 innocent enjoyment, to mourn — w^ith a pathos 
 more pathetic than they dream who see nothing 
 but a whimsical humor in the saying — " Man 
 Dim! how dehghtful this is! It would be 
 quite perfect, if there w^ere only a little sin 
 in it." 
 
 But if w^hat 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 gay society^ requires the asso- 
 ciation of the two sexes in it f The problem is 
 not solved by the ready reply, ""Why, the 
 pleasure of social intercourse is always heighlr 
 ened when both sexes participate in it. AVe 
 enjoy an evening of cards the better for this 
 piquant commingling Bnt you have missed 
 the pMnt of the problem. The questicn is not. 
 
MODERN 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 that 
 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 comaviality 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 qnite without the com- 
 pany of gentlemen. But come to the dance — 
 and what a difference ! Wbere do young ladieg 
 keep up their practice of calisthenics after leav- 
 ing boarding-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 
 
73 
 
 THE DAKCE OF 
 
 there, of a lonesome evening, seek 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 1 
 — 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 Christian 
 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 w^ho 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 uncliastity 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 miconscioue^ 
 
MODERN SOClETf, 
 
 73 
 
 ness oi evil influence were a trustworthy pro- 
 phylactic against it ! Once again, and for all, 
 I protest with the utmost sincerity that I am 
 &r 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 son, 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 purging 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 inhei^ 
 ently voluptuous amusement. 
 
 And then consider, ye Christian fathers, and 
 brothers, and husbands, to what horrible haz* 
 
74 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 ards of contact tlie opportui jties cf tlie dance 
 expose your daughters, and sisters, and wivee. 
 For whOj that has gained any experience of the 
 world, is ignorant of the fact that hardly once 
 does a considerable party assemble, even in the 
 most respectable society, without including some 
 man whom his associates know^ to be a libertine 
 at heart, if not in life? To think of pui-e 
 women pastured on, with ])alras of pollution, 
 and with imminent eyes of adultery, by such a 
 bull of Bashan, the evening long, iu the promis- 
 cuous corral of the dance ! What better facil- 
 ities could be imagined for an accomplished 
 voluptuary to compass the capture of his 
 P^^ey !^ 
 
 * I shall never lose the impression 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 som6 secluded 
 nook in the country where a superstitious horror, once 
 re igious, still bears sway against the dance, while yet a 
 
MODERN SOCIETY, 
 
 75 , 
 
 Faugh I In tlie ordinary occasions of society, a 
 lady may let her sacred intuitions have sonio 
 play to guard her against the access of impur- 
 ity in the uniform 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 tliat may at any time 
 choose to bring you finger-tip to finger-tip with 
 those whose touch is polkition, or, it may be, en- 
 circle you in their arms I \ A burning blush of 
 speechless shame were the best reply to the in- 
 
 sult of such an invitation, 
 an advocate more eloquen 
 
 But I plead against 
 than any individu- 
 
 al's words. Oh, Fashion! Fashion! What 
 
 variety of kissing'' plays are practised in its stead. In a 
 case of social demoralization like this, wo could inia^no 
 how the dance might serve a really useful turn, if intro- 
 duced as a temporary stage of progress towards ultimate 
 more thorough reform 1 
 
76 
 
 THE DANCE OF 
 
 power liast thou to browbeat holy nature, so 
 tlia.t she dares not speak to assert her sacred 
 claims against thy imperious sway 1 
 
 T abruptly dispatch this hateful subject with- 
 out completing the discussion of it. If my 
 readers have winced at the exceptional plain- 
 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 enghieering 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 must 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 lieat of indignation that has warmed 
 his words to take away the offence of their ex- 
 
MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 T7 
 
 treme fidelity. As for the risk of being charged 
 with bringing the impurity that he finds — he 
 contentedly accepts it. It is a charge that two 
 classes of persons certainly will not prefer 
 These two classess are, first, those who know 
 him, and secondly, those who know themaiplves. 
 
 Lord Byron was not a severe moralist, either 
 m theory or in practice. He perhaps did not 
 himself waltz. But he was a man of like pas- 
 sions with his kind, and he knew well enough 
 what the waltz essentially was. Will any pm'e- 
 hearted woman be found willing, after reading 
 the lines that follow, to share a dance of which 
 Buch lines could be written by the author of 
 
78 THE DANCE OF MODERN SOCIETY. 
 
 Don Juan ? I take them from Byron's poem 
 entitled " The Waltz : An Apostrophic Hj^mn 
 
 ** Round all the confines of the yielded waist, 
 The strangest hand may wander undisplaced ; 
 
 Thus all and each, in movement swift or slow. 
 The genial contact gently undergo ; 
 Till some might marvel, with the modest Turk, 
 If * nothing follows all this palming work * ? 
 True, honest Mirza I — you may trust my rhyme- 
 Something does fQllow, 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 blisB 
 Asmodeus struck so bright a stroke as this ; 
 To leach 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-dissembled flame, 
 For prurient nature still will storm the breast— 
 WTiOy 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 charms you view to reap, 
 Say — would you make those beauties quite so cheap t 
 Hot from the hands promiscuously applied, 
 Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side. 
 Where were the rapture then to clasp the form. 
 From this lewd grasp and lawless contact warmf* 
 
/ 
 
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