I only wish that certain parents, who think they are restricting their children to "parlor dancing at home only," could have been with me the night of May 30th, 1892, and seen, as I did, their girls, some of them but twelve or fourteen years of age, dancing in a public saloon, where so much beer had been spilt on the floor that the women had to hold their dresses up to keep them from getting soiled and wet as they danced.
This is usually the result of teaching the child to dance and then restricting them to home dancing. If they once become fascinated with it they must and will, by some means, fair or foul, have more of it than their homes afford.
There are professing Christians who condemn the sale of liquor, advocate the closing of saloons, and frown on Sunday picnics and other amusements, who allow their own children to attend so-called select dancing parties.
In these places are taught the rudiments of an education which may make them graduates of the saloon or the brothel.
I do not say that it always does, but I do say that it often does.
The safe side is the best side. Keep them from taking the first step to ruin, and they can never take the last.
Where did the majority of the drunkards take their first drink? Where did the gambler play his first card? Where did three-fourths of the women, who are to-day living a life of shame, have a man's arm about them for the first time?
Let me answer.
The first drink of the drunkard was just a social glass.