DO CREDIT TO A TALMAGE
or an old-time backwoods hard-shell Baptist preacher. She talks with a rapidity that is marvellous, every fibre in her willowy body vibrates, her eyes shine and her thin hands beat the air and rend the countenance of an imaginary Satan. She continues to speak until completely exhausted, and when she ceases another mighty chorus fills the hall. One after another the soldiers get up and relate their experience. Yonder is a man who used to be a dry-haired and gray-faced drunkard; now he is a man with new life coursing in his veins and shining in his eyes. He tells what the Lord has done for him, and as he relates the story his wife, who will never be beautiful again, for twenty years of unceasing misery have stamped themselves upon her, falls upon her knees, and, with the fast tears flowing down her cheeks, cries, “Yes, it’s all true, thank God, it’s all true!” That girl who is speaking now used to be a night hawk herself, but no one can mistake her earnestness. And thus the night wears on amid the crash of discordant music and the wailings and cries of the converted. The crowd begins to thin towards twelve o’clock, young men and women meet at the door, exchange a glance and a whispered word, and then slide out into the darkness. Suddenly there is a tumult in the lower part of the hall. A cry of “fight!” a savage oath, the audience rise as if by magic, and two or three muscular soldiers wrench a disorderly visitor to the door and fling him into the street. The singers sing till they are hoarse, the talkers talk till their voices crack, the exhorters look wan and ghastly, the tamborine players fall asleep in their seats, the noisy place stills frequently, and by four o’clock in the morning the last of them steps through the entrance and finds his way through the grey streets towards home.
CHAPTER XV.
THE “SCHOOL.”
Ask any old and experienced officer on the police force, What does more to corrupt the morals of the young men and young women of this city than anything else, and he will answer almost certainly, “These dancing schools.” And if he added that they also did more to undermine the constitutions of many a “buirdly chiel and bonny lassie” than even the doctors do, he would also be right. You will hear a young man or woman talk about “going to school,” but you do not need to be deceived into thinking that they are taking a course at the public night schools. The arts taught in the school that they attend, they are already probably very proficient in.
Some eight or nine years ago these dancing assemblies were very common, and were attended by nice people, but year by year they have grown worse until the average “school” of the present day would be shocking and ruinous to any girl of correct sensibilities.
The “school,” and its congener the hop, or dancing social, is invariably held in some public hall. A committee is formed by a number of young men, who stand to make some money if the “school” is a popular one. The committee should be composed of fighting men, as there is a good deal of constabulary duty to be done. At most of the schools the fair sex are admitted free, and quite a number of the blushing damsels who cannot get a “fellah” take advantage of that rule. When they get into the hall, however, they run a fair chance of