A friend at my elbow remarks. "I agree with you perfectly, but my wife likes these dances,—sees no harm in them, and her concluding and unanswerable argument is, that if I danced them, I should like them just as well as she does." The truth of this latter statement depends upon your moral perceptions. There is but one answer to the former, given by "Othello,"
"This is the curse of Marriage:
We call these delicate creatures ours—
But not their appetites."
If you are so lax in your attention—so deficient in those qualities which go to make a woman happy—that she seeks the embrace of other men to supply the more than half acknowledged need—if this be true, my friend, I leave the matter with you—it belongs to another class of subjects, treated of by Doctor Acton of London—-I refer you to his able works.
Another says: Both my wife and I enjoy these dances. We see no particular harm in them—"to the pure all things are pure." The very same thing may be said by the habitués of other haunts of infamy—
''Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."