For what our morals are to be, or ought;

Who wisely wish the charms you view to reap,

Say—would you make those beauties quite so cheap?"

But this fine animal is by no means the most common or degraded type of ball-room humanity. It would be perhaps better if he were. In his mighty embrace a woman would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that she was dancing with a wholesome creature, however destitute he might be of the finer feelings that go to make up what is called a man.

No, the most common type of the male "perfect dancer" is of a different stamp. This is the blockhead who covers his brains with his boots—to whom dancing is the one serious practical employment of life, and who, it must be confessed, is most diligent and painstaking in his profession. He is chastity's paramour—strong and lusty in the presence of the unattainable, feeble-kneed and trembling in the glance of invitation; in pursuit a god, in possession an incapable—satyr of dalliance, eunuch of opportunity. This creature dances divinely. He has given his mind to dancing, has never got it back, and is the richer for that. He haunts "hops" and balls because his ailing virility finds a feast in the paps and gruels of love there dispensed. It is he to whose contaminating embrace your wi—I mean your neighbor's wife or daughter, dear reader, is oftenest surrendered, to whet his dulled appetite for strong meats of the bagnio—nay to coach him for offences that must be nameless here. She performs her function thoroughly, conscientiously, wholly—merges her identity in his, and lo! the Beast with two Backs!

A pretty picture is it not?—-the Grand Passion Preservative dragged into the blaze of gas to suffer pious indignities at the hand of worshippers who worship not wisely, but too well! The true Phallos set up at a cross-roads to receive the homage of strolling dogs—male and female created he them! Bah! these orgies are the spawn of unmannerly morals. They profane our civilization, and are an indecent assault upon common sense. It is nearly as common as the dance itself, to hear the male participants give free expression, loose tongued, to the lewd emotions, the sensual pleasure, in which they indulge when locked in the embrace of your wives and daughters; if this be true, if by any possibility it can be true, that a lady however innocent in thought is exposed to lecherous comments of this description, then is it not also true that every woman possessing a remnant of delicacy, will flee from the dancing-hall as from a pestilence.

[Original]