"When I was sixteen years of age, I saw in a paper an advertisement stating that an elderly lady wanted a young lady as companion and amanuensis. The advertisement read very smoothly and I answered it. The woman, who was seemingly a prepossessing, lonely old woman, inspected my recommendations and at once engaged me on trial. I shortly returned to her, taking with me some of my choicest worldly possessions; but before I had been with her twenty-four hours, some of her strange actions so alarmed me that on the following morning I made the excuse at the breakfast table of wanting to go to my boarding-place for expected mail, promising to return within half an hour. After I had told the family of my experiences and suspicions, the mother would not allow me to return even for my effects, which I have not seen from that day to this. It turned out that I was only one of about forty girls who had been engaged by that diabolical woman to fill 'positions as companions.' I am very thankful that 'the way of escape' had been made for me, and though feeling badly about losing my belongings, I agreed with my friends that it were better to avoid notoriety than to create a disturbance.
"At the time of this occurrence (it was in San Francisco) I had but recently arrived from England, the land of my birth and breeding, under the protection of elderly people, who consigned me to the care of relatives in California. As with thousands of other girls, my education on certain lines had been badly neglected. I was, alas! too unsophisticated.
"In after-years, when I became a Christian in spirit as well as in name, I thanked God for this early experience, which has enabled me to sympathize with those who, much of the time, are more sinned against than guilty of sinning, and who so often are enticed away by the various methods devised by unprincipled beings called men and women.
SATAN LURKS IN THE WALTZ.
"Yes; I have watched them dance in many places, even in Los Angeles. Is it degrading, demoralizing? You know as well as I that there is nothing uplifting, nothing of a good moral tendency, about the dance, especially the waltz; and I saw nothing else offered than the waltz, or round dances closely resembling it, in either of the places I attended last evening.
"My heart sorely ached as I observed mothers with their little girls, five to twelve years old, allowing, aye, even encouraging them to get up and waltz on the same floor with questionable characters. Evidently there is little or no need of introductions. Both sexes anxiously observe who are the best dancers, and soon these, though perhaps total strangers, are spinning, sliding, or gliding about together, in many instances in a close embrace, breast to breast, and cheek to cheek. But they 'must dance.' they 'love it so.' And the music! The most sensual, the most alluring, as subtle as a wily serpent, and just as harmful.
"There were church-members there; mothers chaperoning their young daughters; mothers who profess to be following in the footsteps of the Redeemer; mothers who have promised to bring up their little ones in the way Jesus would have them.
"In a few instances I even saw fathers waltzing with their own little girls on the great crowded dance-hall floor as late as nearly midnight. 'What!' you say, 'surely no father would think of such a thing.' Perhaps not; perhaps I am presuming. Perhaps it was the mother's escort to the ball in each instance. I don't know. This I do know: Those little children last night were eager, hungry, craving, tireless dancers. O merciful God! The pity of it, the pity of it!
"I observed some of the young men. The contour of some of their heads peculiarly interested me. To be sure, you could not tell what the girls' heads were like because of so many etceteras bulging out all over; but as I looked at many of the young men's heads, I was not long in deciding that those who danced the most gracefully evidently had the bulk of their brains in their heels.
"At the first place I visited, one young fellow walked up to a pretty pompadoured, short-skirted miss who stood close to me and who had waltzed with several strangers, and asked her to dance. She refused him. Why? He smelt too strong of whiskey and was unsteady in his gait, but she did not give him that as her reason, and because of his persistence she soon said to her companions (some other young girls), 'Come on, let's go down to——; there isn't enough fun here.' It was no sooner said than done. I also left for this other place, where I found hundreds of couples dancing, and many refined, pretty-looking young girls sitting or standing around, waiting for any strange young man to invite them on to the floor and hug them (oh yes, better call things by their proper names)—hug them to alluring waltz-time.