Old Fenton has told us that flattery "supples the toughest fool," but I regard the man who thus willingly resigns his wife to the palming of these ball-room satyrs, merely because her beauty and gorgeous raiment bring notice upon him as the owner of so splendid an article—I regard this beast as a pander of the vilest kind; and a most foolish pander withal, for he simply purchases the title of cuckold at the price of his own dishonor and his wife's open shame. He loves to hear it said that she "dances divinely," though he knows that the horns on his forehead are plainer to none than to the fellow who tells him so. Bah! In the words of Mallet,

"He who can listen pleased to such applause

Buys at a dearer rate than I dare purchase."

The budding horns affixed to the husband's pow in the fierce light of the ballroom have not the simple dignity of even the most towering antlers prepared by the "neat-handed Phyllis" of his heart in the domestic seclusion and subdued half-lights of a house of assignation. In the one case he poses as a suppliant for honors to mark his importunity; in the other his coronation is the unsought reward of modest merit. The Waltz may not make such despicable creatures as I have described above, but it at least affords them an opportunity to parade their own degradation.

But the modern Terpsichore has to answer for, if possible, still worse consequences than the seducing of our maids, the debauching of our young men, the prostitution of our wives, and the debasing of human nature, both male and female. She is worse than a procuress, there is blood upon her skirts, she is a murderess.

From the day when Herodias danced John the Baptist's head into a trencher the dance has been the cause of violence and bloodshed. The hate and jealousy which smoulder within the breast of the rejected lover, and which he is struggling to extinguish, burst into flame at the sight of her he loves folded in ecstacy upon the breast of his rival. His cup was already full—this is more than he can bear.

We may pass by Venetian masquerade and Spanish fandango—where the knife of the avenger sends the victim's, blood spurting into the face of his partner—and may look nearer home, at our fashionable "hops" and "sociables," where, though the Vendetta may not be carried out upon the floor (and instances of this are not lacking) it is nevertheless declared, and where, though no mute form be borne out from the ball-room to the grave, the dance is none the less a veritable Dance of Death—a dance of murdered love and slain friendship, of stabbed and bleeding hearts, of crushed hopes and blighted prospects, of ruined virtue and of betrayed trust.

[Original]