It is often urged that dancing cannot ' be desperately wicked, because it is "tolerated by all except those of narrow and bigotted religious views." A greater mistake was never made, I assert that there are hosts of men who never permit the members of their families to take part in round dances. Nor is this the result of religious bigotry. With most of them "religion," in the popular sense of the word, does not enter into the question at all—they are not too pious, but too chaste to dance. In their eyes this familiar "laying on of hands" is essentially indecent, and they cannot see that the fact of its being done in public makes it any less indecent. They will not allow even omnipotent Fashion to blind them in this matter, especially when they see that the vice is most common among those who lead the fashion.
Far be it from me, however, to imply that even the most ardent votaries of the dance are blind to its impurity. No indeed. Is there one so-called respectable woman among them who would submit to be painted or photographed in the attitude she assumes while dancing the latest variety of waltz—even though her partner in the picture, instead of being a stranger just met for the first time, were her most intimate friend—aye, even though he were her husband? Not one of them would submit to be thus depicted; but if some maiden could be persuaded, what a pleasing family picture it would be for her husband and children to gaze upon in later years! Had I such an one to illustrate this book with, the success of its mission would be assured, with the simple drawback of the author being held amenable to an offended law for issuing obscene pictures.
Such a representation would immediately effect the fulfillment of a prophecy made by the writer of a recent work entitled "Saratoga in Nineteen Hundred." In those times there is to be no more dancing. The gentlemen, it is true, are to engage the ladies for a portion of the evening as in these benighted days; but instead of taking her on the floor, he will retire with her to one of a number of little private rooms with which every respectable mansion is to be provided, and there they will do their hugging in private. A great improvement, certainly, upon the present plan, in such matters as decency and comfort, but scarcely in completeness.
It will only remain for the sons and daughters of that future generation to make dancing their religion. Let them convert their churches into dancing-halls, and set up an appropriate image of their deity—the Waltz—upon the altars; not the decently draped Terpsichore of the dark, pagan past, but the reeling Bacchante—flushed, panting, dishevelled, half-naked, half-drunk, half-mad—of the enlightened; Christian present; let the grave priest give way to the gay master-of-ceremonies, and the solemn benediction to the parting toast; let the orchestra occupy the pulpit, and the "wallflowers" sit in the vestry; let the pews be swept away, and the floors duly waxed and polished, but let not the tablets of the dead be removed—they are the "handwriting upon the wall," the mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, most fitting for those to read who delight in the Dance of Death. Then, when the prayerbooks are programmes, and the hymnbooks the music of Strauss, the jingle of the piano may mock the dumb thunder of the organ, and the whirling congregation may immortalize a bard of to-day by singing the following verses of his composition to the "praise and glory of"—the Waltz:
"In lofty cathedrals the organ may thunder
Its echoes repeated from fresco-crowned vaults,
And the multitude kneeling in rapture may wonder,
But give me the music that sounds for the waltz!
The Angels of Heaven, in glory advancing,
Are singing hosannahs of praise to the King;