If you wish her to become graceful there are schools of physical culture which are much better adapted to the development of health and grace, and much less to the development of vile passions and depraved natures. What I have said before will be no surprise to those who waltz, though, of course, they will feign great surprise, ignorance, and innocence of it all.
But dancing schools are often made use of in a way that is not so well known. Professional thieves often frequent these places. Many of them are perfect dancers and good conversationalists. They appear most respectable and are, of course, so considered, since they are found in the select school, where references are required.
They gain admittance to the school either by practising fraud upon the dancing master, or inducing him to practice fraud upon the public by admitting such a man for a liberal compensation, to what he advertises to be a select school.
When once in a school it is an easy matter to form the acquaintance of the wives and daughters of wealthy men.
To these he makes himself most agreeable, as he well knows how to do, and, if possible, manages by some means or other, to get an invitation to call. If he fails, he makes some excuse to call without an invitation. During his calls he manages, if opportunity presents itself, to seize some valuables; if not he will locate them, to be called for upon some future dark night, and he is quite safe from arrest, for even if suspected he knows that the ladies of the house who have been seen with him in public would only bring disgrace upon themselves by arresting for theft a man upon whose breast they often reclined in public.
This, however, is of small account. If it was the only evil connected with dancing, this book would never have been written. The loss of earthly possessions is of little consequence when compared with the loss of health, happiness, purity and virtue.
I simply tell you this to show you how many evils a dancing master is cognizant of in connection with dancing, that the generality of people know little or nothing about.
Some one has said that few people know better than the dancing master and saloon keeper, how many souls are sent through the port holes of hell between the ages of fourteen and twenty by these two agencies of the devil.
And he is right.
The heart of the dancing master must be even harder than that of the saloon keeper, for while the saloon keeper must witness the harmful and disgraceful indulgence of men, principally, he knows that there is a chance that it may prove only a harmful indulgence.