DANCING AND BALLS.
"They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance." Job xxi, 11.
Let us now turn from outdoor diversions to those amusements which do not, of necessity, demand daylight and space for their cultivation.
Dancing is one of these; and as attempts are being made at the present time to introduce it into circles whence it has hitherto been rigidly excluded, we honor it with the first place in this part of the discussion, and propose to give it all due attention. It is presumed that the advocates of dancing will insist, at the outset, that we shall make a distinction among the various fashionable dances of the times. It is not probable that any reader of this volume will attempt to defend the "German," or round dances. It is a shameful, revolting spectacle to see a young girl whirling around in the arms of a man who perhaps an hour ago was an utter stranger to her, her head leaning upon his breast, and their whole persons in closest contact. This style is positively immodest, corrupting, offensive to morals, as well as to delicacy and refinement. How dare a young man propose any such performance to a lady for whom he has a shadow of respect? How can any young lady, who respects herself, submit to it?
But cotillons and quadrilles, we are told, are different; they are modest, graceful, and harmless. Doubtless there is a difference, and yet they differ only as the varioloid differs from the worse disease.
It is not necessary to prove that the mere motion is sinful in order to condemn it; nor need we assail the personal character of all who plead for dancing, in one form or another, as an innocent amusement. The abstract possibility of its being so practiced as to render it a healthful exercise may be admitted. I am acquainted with a gentleman of more than three-score years and ten, whose erect form and happy face, ruddy with health and radiant with kindness and inward peace, are pleasant to see. Meeting him in the street one day, I asked him how he managed to be young when he was old—how he contrived to keep up the life and bloom of Spring amid the chill winds and gathering clouds of Winter. In reply, he alluded reverently to the Divine Master, whom he serves in gladness of heart, as the source of all blessing, and then added: "I take care of my health. I take exercise. I rise early in the morning, and among the very first things that I do I put on a pair of soft slippers, go up into the attic of my house, and then go round and round in a circle, on a gentle run, till I am in a pleasant glow. This makes me feel well and cheerful all day."
Now, if any advocate of dancing will practice it only as our aged friend practices his peculiar exercise, we bring no accusation against his sanitary measures; we have no controversy with his principles or his performances. We will even go so far as to confess the beauty of certain fancy pictures of innocent dancing in the family circle, wherein one daughter presides at the piano, and the rest of the children whirl about in their graceful evolutions, till father and mother feel the happy contagion, and, starting up, join in the mirth; and even the white-haired grandsire looks on admiringly, and keeps time with his best foot, and applauds with his cane, and then calls the household to order for evening prayers. We do not happen to know any "happy family" where devotion and dancing live together on such excellent terms; nevertheless, extraordinary things do occur in the world, and this may possibly be among them.
But all this does not shake the settled conviction that it would be unwise to cultivate dancing of any sort as an amusement, or even to tolerate it. The reasons upon which this conclusion is based are numerous and weighty.
1. Dancing as it is usually practiced, and will continue to be practiced, if at all, lacks the elements of true recreation.
It is folly to talk of sending children to dancing schools, and then confine their performances to the family circle. Dancing is essentially an exhibition which addresses the eye of the spectator, and craves admiration. It tends directly to cultivate the love of display and of the praise which it elicits, a passion as avaricious in its way as the miser's greed of gold. Introduce dancing generally, and of the youth who attain a degree of proficiency not a few will soon tire of the approval of the little circle, and thirst for the applause of the multitude. They who imagine that they have acquired a grace and a skill which can not fail to win the praises of all beholders, will not be content to hide their light under the bushel of home, and soon the performances in the private parlor will be considered of no account, except as rehearsals for more public displays, and the ball-room will be looked upon as the proper field where artistic ambition is to win its laurels.
And in this form dancing is detrimental to soul and body. The late hours which it involves are a fatal objection to it. The confined atmosphere in which it is practiced is injurious. The style of the refreshments common on such occasions, and the untimely hour when they are taken, increase the evil. The undue excitement exhausts instead of invigorating the vital powers. The sudden transitions from the heated ball-room to the chill night air are not safe, as many an early grave can testify. These things conspire to make a ball or a dancing party a direct attack upon the health of those who attend it. Instead of invigorating the weak, it requires vigor to endure the exhausting strain. A single night thus spent will make its visible mark upon the face. They who escape with the least injury are languid and dull, and perhaps irritable, for days afterward, while some are totally unfitted for their usual avocations, and require time to recover, as if from an attack of illness. While physical health is thus impaired or imperiled, there is no promise of mental or moral improvement to compensate the injury. There is no time for rational conversation, and any attempt in that direction would be deemed out of place. The liveliest imagination can see no moral good in the performance. The whole thing produces no higher pleasure than engine-boys feel while running in search of the fire; and in the matter of aching heads and low spirits, it is probable that those who run with the engine and those who attend the ball are about alike the next day.
2. Dancing has had a historic name.
There was, indeed, in ancient times, a solemn religious ceremony, which, through the poverty of human language, was called dancing. When Pharaoh and his host sank into the depths of the sea, while Israel stood safe upon the shore, Miriam and her maidens came forth with timbrels and with dances, and sang to the Lord a lofty anthem of praise and thanksgiving. When David brought home the ark of God he danced before it; but it was a strictly religious ceremony, nothing like the caperings and curvetings of our own day. There is no intimation whatever that Miriam and her maidens, or David, ever danced except on such occasions. Pleasure dances have been almost universally held in bad repute. The daughter of Herodias danced to please Herod, as he sat at the banquet, bewildered with wine; but the performer was one who could lightly ask for the life of an innocent man and a devoted servant of God; and the royal spectator was a tyrant, who could carelessly order his execution. In Rome, and Athens, and Ephesus the dancing was done by the degraded and the vile, who employed it as a means of advertising their profession. The dancers of Egypt and India at the present day are of the same character.
Now, I do not know that it would be right for me to denounce indiscriminately all who perform publicly in places of amusement in our cities and towns, yet it is safe for me to say that a dancing girl, however loudly her fame may be trumpeted by the newspapers, finds her professional reputation every-where a bar to her reception into good society. Why should it be so? It certainly is not because of the mere publicity of professional life. If it were, then Miss Dickinson and Miss Evans, and scores of others, would find themselves in the same condemnation, instead of being honored and applauded. Why a female public lecturer should be respected, and a female public dancer despised and shunned, I can not understand, unless there is something in dancing itself, or in the character of those who have made it their profession, that has merited condemnation. Ladies of the highest respectability go to hear the lecturer, and at the close crowd around the desk to be introduced to her; other ladies, certainly no more scrupulous in regard to their associations, go to see the dancer perform, and the next day will not look at her in the street. What makes the difference? Will the apologist for dancing explain?
3. A love for dancing parties and balls is universally deemed inconsistent with the seriousness and devotion which characterize a true Christian.
Dancing is regarded as the favorite diversion of the vain and the frivolous. Nominal Christians may be found at balls and dancing assemblies, but they are persons who have no weight of Christian character, and exert no influence in favor of religion. The world, unconvicted and careless, rather likes such professors of religion, because their example is an opiate wherewith to quiet an occasional pang of conscience. The worldly and the prayerless think more favorably of themselves and of their prospects of heaven when they see that Church members resemble them so closely. But when the worldly man is convinced of sin, and desires to find pardon, he never sends for one of these unfaithful professors to give him spiritual counsel. When the wicked are about to die, they do not want prayer offered at their bedside by any of these fiddling, dancing, wine-bibbing, honorary members of the Church. They name men and women of undoubted piety. They suspect those who can join them in their follies and feel no condemnation. They do not estimate very highly a Christian profession which exerts so little control over those that make it. Nay, rebuke a scorner for his sins, and in many cases he will seek to defend himself by a sneering allusion to those very professors of religion who verily believe that they were making capital for their Church by showing that it can not be suspected of being "Puritanic."
4. Dancing involves undesirable associations.
We bring no indiscriminate accusations against those who love to dance. In almost every community where it is cultivated to any great extent, it will not be confined to any particular class nor to any one moral level. Still, if we are to tell the whole truth, it must be stated that dancing prevails less as you ascend the scale of virtue, intelligence, and religion, and more as you go down to explore the realms of ignorance and vice. However numerous and, after their fashion, respectable its votaries may be, there is a line above which it never prevails. Like the deluge in the days of Noah, it fills the valleys first, and covers the low places; but, unlike the deluge, there are elevations which the swelling waters never reach, heights upon which the dark tide never shows even its spray. In our great cities, those sections which are recognized as the homes and dens of vice and degradation, the very region and shadow of death, abound in dance-houses; and the sound of the violin and of many trampling feet mingles nightly with the noise of rage and blasphemy, and the hoarse clamor of bloody strife. Intemperance and infamy are foul birds which agree well in the same nest with dancing. But as you ascend the scale, not only the more gross forms of vice, but the dance is left behind long before you reach the highest altitudes. The devotedly pious, the truly pure in heart, do not dance. In all ages of the Church such spirits have always kept aloof from the follies of their times, and had "no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness."
They who give themselves to this amusement, therefore, turn away from the best examples of pure and undefiled religion, and the noblest, holiest fellowship within their reach. They ally themselves with the worldly, the thoughtless, the prayerless, the gay butterflies of fashion and soulless pleasure. They throw themselves among influences in the highest degree unfavorable to sober views of life, and the earnest, thorough performance of its great duties. They voluntarily leave the rock and the shore of safety to launch upon a treacherous stream, the rippling music of whose waters will soon cease, and the bloom of whose flowery banks will soon disappear, and whose current, silent but swift and strong, bear them steadily away from light and hope down to despair, remorse, and ruin.
Dancing wastes time, wastes health, scatters serious thought, compromises Christian character, leads to entangling associations with frivolous minds and careless hearts. It is as sure a foe to intellectual growth as to moral progress. Young people who are famed as "beautiful dancers" are generally good for nothing else. The time that should be devoted to something valuable is spent in practicing posture-making before a mirror, or a professor of the high art, who shows them how to step so, and so, and so; while God calls, the Savior waits, life wanes, and the tremendous realities of the eternal world every moment come nearer. Even Cicero, the heathen moralist, affirms that "no man in his senses will dance." The dancing-master is the devil's drill-sergeant, just as the theater is the devil's church.
