THE
DANCE OF MODERN SOCIETY:
w. CW~WILtKINSON.
NEW YORK:
OAKLEY, MASON & CO.,
21 MURRAY STREET.
1870.
.".. 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the yea: 1869.
By OARLY, MASON & Co.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
E. O. JENKINS,
STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER.
20 N. WILLIAM ST., N. Y.
*'
*. - 
PREFATORY NOTE.
It is now nearly two years since the most of
the following pages appeared as an article in one
of our  American  quarterly  reviews.   The
article immediately attracted attention,  and
was widely copied and commented on by the
periodical press, both religious and secular. As
was to have been expected, the comments were
sometimes in a friendly and sometimes in a
hostile sense.  Up to the present time, the
writer has continued to receive solicitations,
from the most diverse quarters, to issue his
essay again, in some such form as should make
it accessible to the general public. These
suggestions, still persisting after the lapse of
so many months, have seemed to be an evidence
(3)
l'i' I /'
,    li
I 
PREFATORY NOTE.
that the essay was accepted by a considerable
number of minds as a satisfactory expression of
opinion on a subject of living social and ethical
interest. It is at least a positive expression, and
written not in the dialect of any religious sect,
but in the uniiversal language of morality.
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TEE DANCE
OF
MODERN SOCIETY.
I PROPOSE an unusual compliment to the
Dance-I propose to discuss it.  I cheerfully
lend it dignity for the purpose. I pledge myself, besides, to put it permanently beyond
the need of borrowing again. For I shall be
able, I believe, to vindicate for it a dignity all
its own-the dignity of being exceedingly evil
-a  digonity which, however modestly worn, I
think that it possesses in a degree commensurate
with the magnitude of its littleness in every
other respect.
I purpose, then, to discuss the Dance as practised in modern society. I purpose to discuss
it earnestly, but temperately, with strong conviction certainly, but without unreasonable prejudice, and in a manner not to violate the decorum of a sincere personal respect toward those
who agree with me in zeal for good morality,
(5) 
THE DANCE OF
but differ from me in opinion upon the present
topic.
I do not, it will be seen, affect the candor
either of ingenuous inquiry or of judicial neutrality. Much less do I affect the candor of a
merely curious unconcern.  I appear as an advocate, and I do not expect, as I shall not attempt, to avoid the vehemence of advocacy. I
volunteer my office on behalf of several imperilled interests, all of them valuable, and one at
least vital. It is the cause at once of Health,
of Economy, of the Social Nature, of Intellectual Improvement, and of Morality, that I defend. I undertake to implead the Dance in
their joint behoof as the common and equal
enemy of them all.
I shall summon the accused to answer, not at
the bar of passion, however holy and religious,
and not before the tribunal of Scripture, howcver clear and authoritative, but rather in the
wide and open forum of reason, of conscience,
and of common sense. If the Dance can escape
conviction here, she shall be welcome for me to
make her pirouette, and go tilting out of court,
6 
MODERN SOCIETY.
free to take her chances of living down, as best
she may, the ancient and sacred suspicion
against her, which still survives in that one safe
sanctuary left for a badgered and brow-beaten
morality ready to be ashamed of itself-the inviolate bosom of the Christian church.
The conscience and the sentiment of the
American community produce a tolerably uniform annual crop of discourses and of newspaper articles on this favorite social amusement-'
"social amusement "-it would be hard to deny
it the name by which, with a Mephistophelian
sort of pleasantry suspiciously its own, the
dance has succeeded in getting itself currently
called. But beyond a chance sermon or so, each
year, that attains to the temporary apotheosis
of print, I am not aware that anything in the
form of a book has yet treated exclusively of a
subject which, what with the talk that it occasions, and the talk that it supersedes, displaces
more conversation in so-called society than perhaps any other topic of human interest in the.
world.
Hiere, then, is the phenomenon of a social in
7 
THE DANCE OF
stitution that has grown to a really overshadowing greatness among us almost unperceived,
simply by the policy of maintaining always,
with a persistent laugh, that it was quite too
small to merit a serious word. I have a serious
word, notwithstanding, to say, and I am willing
to compromise the dignity of authorship, in the
judgment of any who may think that I do so,
by saying it in a little book.
The subject of amusement at large, it would
not comport with the simplicity of my present
purpose to discuss. But a remark or two in
passing will not be irrelevant.
It is an ill augury for a Christian age to be
spendinig much brain and breath upon the question how to amuse itself. Upon the whole, it is
a pagan question; and paganism itself has already declined from its heroic virtue before it
condescends to entertain it. But if Christian
teachers allow themselves to be caught with
this wile of the devil, and submit to waste their
earnestness in pitiful casuistry upon points of
what? and when? and where? and how much?
and how? in the art of amusement, whence, one
8 
MODERN SOCIETY.
mighit implore to know, are we to hope for the
voice that shall reanimate an abject and oblivious age? If the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?  And if the blind lead
the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
The truth is, the most of those who clamor so
nnappeasably for amusement are precisely that
class of persons who need amusement least.
They are the cloyed, the sated, sons and daughters of pleasure, those who  feel the "fullness of satiety "-who sigh, like the Eastern
prince, for a fresh sensation, and  languidly
offer a prize for a new device of diversion.
These jaded voluptuaries need nothing so little
as amusement.  What  they do need  is the
bracing tonic regimen of wholesome, honest,
useful work-l such as the teeming dispensary
of Providence is never at a loss to supply.
They might well mistake the thrill of unaccustomed and unexpected delight which would go
through their lax nerves with a few strokes of
vigorous work in some good cause, not in their
own, for that novel and delicious tingle of
pleasure which they had been awaiting and
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TTHE DANCE OF
invoking so long.  How crass the folly of try
ing to satisfy these morbid seekers after amusement by giving them what they crave I
And yet there is a cry from some quarters,
and a cry that upon the whole seems likely to
grow, summoning the Young Men's Christian
Associations of the country to enter the:eld of
competition to purvey amusement for this class
of minds. It will prove to be a hazardous career of experiment. The plan would be to enrich the variety of entertainment that now invites the yol'mg to an evening of rational enjoyment in their hospitable rooms, by adding facilities for games, such as backgammon, draughts
chess, billiards. It is most earnestly to be
hoped that whenever this experiment is tried, it
may be tried under auspices that shall be at once
in the highest degree favorable for its success, if
it ought to succeed, and in the highest degree
safe for guarding the consequences of failure,
if it is destined to fail. It is creditable to the
good sense which has always prevailed, to a singular extent, in the counsels of these bodies
that they have hitherto decisively resisted the
10 
MODERN SOCIETY.
urgency that has impelled them in the new direction.  Meantime it will be manifest wisdom
for organizations consciously less experienced to
await the result of some better-appointed experiment, in so doubtful a case, than their own co uld
possibly be. It is difficult to conceive of any
practical administration of such a plan that
could make it successful. The theory of it I
believe is a false theory; but if the theory of it
were true, the practical realization of the theory
is beset with innumerable, and, in my opinion,
quite insurmountable, difficulties. Our sentimental times mistake in supposing that evil can
be induced to shade off into good by insensible
degrees. You can never make the transition
from sinful pleasure to innocent pleasure anything less than a violent transition.  The ease
of transition is all the other way. It will be
found fearfully practicable to educate country
boys to love the billiard-table, and to cast the
mother's tearful warning against it behind their
backs, in the conceit of a more modern Christian wisdom to be had in the city. It will be
found easy to give country boys so much practice
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THE DANCE OF
with cue and ball as shall take away their guardian shame of accepting some farther-developed
acquaintance's invitation to turn into a downstairs billiard-room on the street. This drift of
education will prove easy and swift. All the
natural forces of a world of evil will assist it.
But when the direction is reversed, it will be a
different matter. When it comes to decoying
away a country boy, that has once got the taste
of that strange sweetness under his tongue,
from the haunt of pleasure without restraint to
the home of pleasure under Christian law-the
managers of the Associations I fear will find that
it was the sin that gave zest to the pleasure instead of the pleasure that gave zest to the sin.
If for every boy enticed to virtue by the bait of
mere pleasure, there are not two boys enticed to
sin thereby-why, I shall be sincerely rejoiced,
and the originator of the plan will deserve the
credit of having reinforced the gospel of Christ
with an elemental power of salvation not revealed by its author.  Alas! men readily follow
lures of pleasure on the way to hell, but they
revolt, with an obstinacy that is half perverse
12
I 
MODERN SOCIETY.
ness and half honest indignation, against following lures of pleasure to heaven.  But this
whole subject is one that demands and will receive ample discussion.
The dance is popularly reckoned among
amusements. But for this I should not need
to waste a word upon the matter of amusement
in general. As it is, in finding a quarrel with
the dance I shall be held to be waging war
against amusement, unless I explain myself in
a paragraph or two. Briefly, then, I am not an
enemy to amusement. I believe in it. I believe in it heartily. I believe in it so heartily
that I would give it a better name —I would
call it recreation. But amusement needs no
eulogist. It has happened, by the chance concurrence of two conditions having no necessary
relation to each other, that the cause of popular
amusement has of late enlisted among us a singularly numerous and brilliant literary championship. In the first place, there is a pervasive liberalizing spirit abroad everywhere in our
modern American atmosphere, that tends to
relax the tone of moral sentiment respecting
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THlE DANCE OF
all forms of human self-indulgence and material
enjoyment. But in the second place, it is an
incident of our nineteenth century civilization
that we live intensely. Everybody is in a
chronic state of hurry.  This highly stimulated
rate of living takes reprisals upon our vitality,
and we vibrate between extremes of abnormal
activity and extremes of abnormal exhaustion.
In the extremes of exhaustion we desperately
implore some sudden restorative. This restorative it is the transitory fashion of our disease
just now to imagine that we recognize in
amusement. Our men of letters, as the most
sensitive children of civilization, are perhaps
the severest sufferers by the prevalent unnatural velocity of living. It is but a matter of
course that they should most keenly feel the
need of an instantaneous remedy for their enormous overdrafts on a too responsive vitality, and
should most credulously hail whatever remedy
presents itself to their demand.
Now I sympathize vividly with all my literary brethren in the sense of bodily prostration
which follows intellectual toil. I know as well
14 
MODERN  SOCIETY.
as any what it is to have the omnivorous and
insatiable brain suck vigor out of every nerve
and muscle, out of every joint and marrow, in
the body, and leave the whole man a-quiver
with intense and fine exhaustion. I have known
this, and with all my literary brethren I have
longed for relief, and "trusted any cure."  It
costs perhaps the most exquisite agony, except
the agony of remorse, of which an aspiring
mind is capable-to lie still and experience the
conscious impotence of power. Is there no secret of eternal youth for the eager brain, that,
with a grief to which the fabled grief of Alexander was a vulgar emotion, is compelled to sink
helplessly on the hither side of an unconquered
world, which it yet feels to be inalienably its
own, although by right of a conquest never to
be accomplished? It is not an ignoble errantry that wanders in quest of such a prize.
But I am profoundly convinced that the bent
toward'amusement,' or' recreation,' or'muscular development,' call it what you will, that
distinguishes the current decade, is a wrong
bent-a monstrous moral and physical blunder.
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THiE DANCE OF
It is both a whimsical and a pathetic sign of the
times to read the glowing ascriptions to'muscle' with which periodical literature has lately
been illustrated from the pens of writers whose
own muscle had been fairly eaten up by their
brains. It is perfectly manifest that the prevailing literary humor, with respect to amusement, is a sanguine hope that amusement may
prove to be the long-sought medicine, which
shall be able to repair the havoc done to the
body by the starved brain in its voracious forages for food.
To be sure, as regards the athletic forms of
amusement, literary men are not long, in finding
out from experience that muscular activity and
cerebral activity are implacable mutual enemies.
There is no better wisdom on this subject than
that which Hawthorne derived from his share
in the Brook Farm experiment. The reader
will find it set down in the "Blithedale Romance." Hawthorne found that Arcadia and
Attica were very distinct provinces. He says
that when muscle worked, brain would not.
This, I take it, is the invariable experience of
16 
MODERN SOCIETY.
every literary man. The consequence is that
the athletic sports, which are praised by men of
brain, are practised by men of muscle. Literary men, meanwhile, betake themselves to forms
of amusement less arduous to their softened
bodily fibre. They patronize the theatre, the
opera, the billiard table, and, now and then, the
dance.
But they still commit a blunder. Is it recreation, for example, to an editorial writer, to
rush from his mental workshop, with the anvil
of his brain red-hot under the swift and ceaseless blows of thought, to a place of public entertainment, and there rob sleep of the precious
hours before midnight by diverting himself
with a spectacle?  No doubt such diversion is
better for his over-wrought brain than it would
be to continue the tension which the change
partially relaxes. But manifestly rest is his
true medicine. If he must interpose some such
transition, by way of opiate to prepare him for
sleep, that only shows his need of rest to be the
more desperate. When a man has to resort to
soporifics so exhausting that it would task an
2
17.
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unbroken vigor of health simply to sustain them
with impunity, that man's condition goes far
toward resembling the condition of a time-piece
whose main-spring has given way just after
winding.  There is nothing to reserve and regulate his expenditure of vitality. He is continuously and rapidly, he may be helplessly, running
down. We are in urgent need of a new literary period. It should be one eulogistic of REST.
Of all the absurd resorts, however, for recreation, the dance is the most exquisitely absurd.
I shall hardly escape the charge of Puritanism for saying this-although the very un-Puritanic Thackeray does not hesitate to set a man
dowm for an ass that confesses himself fond of
dancing. I should myself select another animal as the proper analogue for such a man. It
is not pleasant to be called PuLritanic now-a
days. It requires either a strong nerve or a
thick skin to incur the epithet. The days of
heroic fame, for the Puritans, seems to have
passed, and we are taking our revenge upon
thiem now for having been praised so long.
They were a grave order of great souls, whose
i8
I 
MODERN SOCIETY.
faults, like their virtues, were on an ample pattern. They undoubtedly went too far in moral
severity; but it was a pathway of error in
which their following was never likely to be
large, since it led only through toil and loss for
themselves, if unhappily it did also lead to
some discomfort, and even suffering, for others.
Their figure in history is large enough, and
unique enough, to make them an inviting target
for the small archery of the witlings of our
gamesome generation. Even Lord Macaulay
having lauded them, in a strain of appreciation
which at least had the generosity, if it had also
the extravagance, of youth in it, in his essay on
Milton, afterward recollected himself to puneture them with more than one of his polished
stiletto antitheses, in his History of England.
Hiardly any of those brilliant surprises of style,
which constitute at once the strength and the
weakness of this great master of composition,
has enjoyed a more popular fame than the verbal lasso which he let fly at the Puritans, when
he said that they hated bear-baiting, not be
cause it gave pain to the bears, but because it
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THE DANCE OF
gave pleasure to the spectators.  How  many
have smiled, with involuntary applause, at this
epigrammatic snare for the hapless Puritans,
and how few have ever troubled themselves to
perceive that the game which it catches is not
the Puritans at all, but the epigrammatist himself. For why, pray, should the Puritans have
hated bear-baiting, but because it gave pleasure
to the spectators? Was not that the demoralizing element in the sport?  And were not the
Puritans then right, if, as Macaulay says, they
hated bear-baiting for the destructive pleasure
that it gave to the spectators, rather than foi
the destructive pain that it gave to the bears.
It is seldom that the fowler is more neatly taken in the snare that he lays.*
* Macaulay is at curious pains to show, in a note, that
the Puritans were not actuated by compassion for the
bears. He cites, in proof, a Puritan document which relates how some bears were seized and shot by the Puritans on the Lord's day, when the sport was at its height.
It might, to be sure, be plausibly maintained, against Macaulay, that such a sudden end of the baiting was even a
measure of mercy to the poor beasts; but it would be safe
to concede to the great historian's need, that the Puritans
were not sentimentalists. It was hardly worth his learning to demonstrate it.
20 
MODERN SOCIETY.
Our modern festive wisdom is far too selfcomplacent. It is not certain, after all, that the
Puritans were not nearer the truth than we.
Grim earnest is nobler than play run mad. It
is even more joyous. It is open to fair doubt
whether the Puritans were not a happier race
of beings than their jovial descendants. And,
in the long run, excessive gravity is not more
cruel than excessive levity. Puritan Boston in
sixteen hundred and sixty-nine is a less depressing spectacle, to the thoughtful student of history,
than is Nouveau Paris in eighteen hundred
and sixty-nine.
Thus much of amusement in general-a subject long since copiously enough, but by no
means as yet exhaustively, discussed. Mfy present business, however, is with the dance, not as
an amusement, but as an existing social institution. For all that I have to say of it, it might
as well be serious as sportive. Indeed I expect
to succeed in making it far more serious than
sportive. I am to enquire into the bearing of the
dance upon several important human interests.
In the first place it is hardly necessary to say
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that dancing, in itself, is perfectly innocent.
No one denies this. It is as harmless to dance
as it is to walk, or to run. But the present
question is not of dancing in the abstract.
Dancing does not exist in the abstract. It exists, like most things, in a certain way. It is
of dancing, as thus practised, in a certain way,
that I am going to speak.  I do not restrict my
argument or my conclusion to balls or public
assemblies. I should waste my zeal. There is
happily, as yet, too unanimous a sentiment
among sensible people against them unless the
case happens to be that of the quadrennial inauguration ball* or other such assembly, by
which it is the barbarian custom still to soil our
social purity and signalize some public occasion.
Then it is no disgrace if a representative Christian name be on the list of "managers!"  And
* It was one of the minor signs betokening a regenera.
tion of manners at our National Capital, on the accession
of the present administration, when Presidenfit Grant, unhappily, as respected that occasion, not Chief Magistrate
of the paramount sovereignty of'society,' suggested to
the' Committee' that the omission of the inauguration
ball would be agreeable to him.
22 
MODERN SOCIETY.
neither do I restrict my argument, or my conclusion, to those rythmic gyrations popularly
called "round dances."  A  popular magazine
never distinguished for martyrdom to principle,
may safely inveigh against these. The argument is merely some degrees stronger, and the
conclusion some degrees clearer, against such
excessive developments of the primordial idea.
When I name the dance (for the sake of being
perfectly understood, I may say) I mean the
dance as many of the most respectable members
of society, including no inconsiderable proportion of accepted Christians, not unfrequently
practice it. I am thus frank, not for the sake
of seeming bold, but for the sake of being clear.
My readers need none of them be at any loss as
to just what I mean. I mean the dance as it
flourishes in the most proper and reputable circles to-day.
For the sake of perspicuity and convenience
I shall pursue the present investigation into the
propriety of the dance, under the following
general topics. The division will, I trust, be
found sufficiently common-place and obvious.
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I. The bearing of the dance upon the
Health;
II. Its relation to Economy;
III. Its Social Tendency;
IV. Its Influence upon Intellectual Improvement;
V. Its Moral or Religious Aspects.
This order of investigation is not merely
mechanical and fortuitous. It will prove to
build a cumulative argument, bearing with
multiplied power, upon the paramount interest
involved, that of morality or religion. The
chief sufferer suffers not only its own injury, but
also the injury of all the rest.
I. What bearing does the dance, as it exists
among us, have upon the health? An amusement ought at least to be harmless in its hygienic effects. If it does not build up, it should
certainly not break down. Now the dance,
considered apart from its conventional purposes,
simply as a physical exercise, might conceivably be so conducted that it would constitute a
wholly health-giving pastime.  In the open air,
24 
MODERN SOCIETY.
at rational hours of the day, for a rational length
of time, scarcely to exceed say an hour, those
participating in it being suitably attired to
permit the freest play of the lungs - these
and other like conditions fulfilled, and the
dance, no doubt, might make good a claim to be
ranked as a healthful diversion. There would
still remain other points of importance to be
settled, before its propriety could be unreservedly admitted; but regarded merely with reference to health, the dance might then pass
without challenge.
But suppose all these rational conditions re
versed.  The gymnasium, in the American use
of the term, is an establishment expressly devoted to purposes of physical culture by means
of physical exercise. What would be thought of
a gymnasium that should carpet its floors, and
close its windows, that should then announce its
hours of exercise as commencing at ten o'clock
at night to continue until two or three o'clock in
the morning, interrupted by a sumptuous midnight feast, all with an in-door atmosphere,
doubly heated and doubly corrupted by fires
-....
*e ee..~
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and by a dense crowd of jostling guests, redolent of perfumes, met under rigorous demands
that their dress should be such as to repress respiration, and to embarrass everything like naturalness and ease of movement? What if, besides, the conditions should be so contrived as
to compel the unnaturally heated gymnasts to
make their transition to a contrasted atmosphere out-of-doors, exposed in the most sensitive
parts of the body, through insufficient clothing,
to the risks of rheumatism, neuralgia, colds,
catarrhs, consumption?  What, I ask, would be
thought of a gymnasium that should conduct
its exercises on such a plan as this?  But is not
the parallel suggested, mainly, and with a margin in favor of particular instances, a tolerably
fair one?
I repeat that I am not discussing the dance
as it might be, but the dance as it is. Those
public-spirited and philanthropic individuals,
who, inspired with zeal for the morals of society, are at present engaged in the hopeful enterplise of elevating the stage to its true position,
as yoke-fellow to the pulpit in the inculcation
26
*..... 
MODERN SOCIETY.
of virtue, will scarcely have time after they
have finished that task to perform a like service
for the dance, in making it what it should be as
the handmaid of medicine in advancing the
standard of the general health. Otherwise, the
two projects are such natural twins they would
appropriately be entrusted to the same hands
for execution.
We are witnessing, just now, a brilliant revival of the pure drama in our metropolis. A
man of genius, and a man of character, as I
suppose, the heir of rare ancestral histrionic
fame, is doing more than one man has ever been
able to do before for the rescue of the stage
from the drag of that downward moral and
aesthetic gravitation which it has never successfully resisted hitherto. A temple reared
and gifted by his own fortunate and munificent
theatrical piety, scenery and appointments unparalleled for splendor, a generous public sympathy with remarkable talent and enterprise,
the auxiliar hopes of all cultivated lovers of the
spectacle-these compose a set of auspices such
as probably will not soon smile on an attempt
2T 
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to save the drama again.  The success already
appears to confirm the auspices. The patron
age of the new theatre is said to be made up in
part of elements that have been fairly won
over to the friendly side from the ranks of those
previously hostile to the stage. It really looks
as if there were some Christians ready at last to
use their influence toward the purification of
what they have striven in vain to abolish.  For
this is the flattering hope with which Christian
people have long been allured to the countenancing of the theatre. They have been told
that by resolutely refusing to attend the theatre,
they have, in effect, deprived it of that conservative influence which it was in their power to
exert, and which was necessary to keep it from
degenerating to the level of its more degraded
patrons. Those Christian men who think that
they are surely wise, if they are only not extreme, have been tempted to take some such
middle ground in respect to the theatre as this.
Now, as Webster told Mr. Hayne, if a thing is
to be done, an ingenious man can tell how it is
to be done.  Let us see how the stage is to be
28 
MODERN SOCIETY.
regenerated by Christian patronage of the stage.
Managers, of course, conduct their operations
with a thrifty eye to the avoidance of deficits
at the end of the season.  They aim to please
their patrons. Christians, therefore, in order to
influence theatrical management, must not
merely give moral, they must give material,
support to the theatre. They must go to the
plays. They must go often enough, and in
numbers enough, to compose a preponderating
proportion of the attendance. Now, the Protestant Christians of New York number, by
recent computation, less than seventy-five thousand souls, in a population of a million. Supposing a general agreement among them all
that a regular attendance at the theatre was at
t]bis juncture the most pressing and most promising method of evangelic effort, they would not
then constitute even one-tenth of the numerical
patronage which the management would study
to please. Rather a slender minority to dictate
the character of the representations. But on
certain evenings of the week obedience to their
Master, in a point where there could be no mis
29 
THE DANCE OF
taking of His will, would draw them away to
their own assemblies for conference, and for
prayer that their zeal in purifying the theatre
might be successful.  On those evenings, what
if Satan should put into the heart of the managers that then, at least, there could be no objection to letting down the moral standard to
the taste of "the general "-would the gain be
great? Or if, for the sake of making their influence more sensible, Christians should concentrate their patronage upon some one theatre,
and should succeed in rendering that unexceptionable, is it certain that ten other theatres
would not spring up to supply the starving appetite of the populace outnumbering them tenfold for low representations?  The purification
of the theatre is the merest catchword that ever
snared a hopeful and credulous public. It means,
at most, but the maintenance of one theatre in
a great city, where a high moral and esthetic
standard of representation is observed. That
might be a gain to the intellectual facilities of
the community, but it would not be one infinitesimal degree of progress toward any substan
30 
MODERN SOCIETY.
tial moral reform. As a matter of present observation, is not the dramatic revival coincident
with a bottomless degradation of the stage?
The close kinship between the subject of the
theatre and the subject of the dance, at just
this point, makes it no digression to have spoken
at such length of the theatre.' Christian people,
and moral people, and sensible people in general, have been exhorted to smile instead of
frowning on the dance, in the assurance that, if
they did so, the willfull but good-heated little
jade would be chliarmed quite out of her frolic
perverseness, and would settle down into as
prim and proper a damsel as any reasonable
person could desire. But I suspect that the
result of such a well-intended attempt at moral
suasion on the dance would be miuch the same
as that sketched for the hypothetical experiment
on the theatre. There might be moral plays
and there might be moral dances; but it is exceedingly questionable if either moral plays or
moral dances would possess that unique aromatic sapor which is requisite in order wholly
to satisfy the appetite of the original lovers of
31 
THE DANCE OF
the legitimate articles. It would certainly be
one of the most striking spectacles of misguided
philanthropy and self-sacrifice, that the world
has ever produced, to behold a well-regulated,
demure-stepping, devout procession of pastors,
elders, deacons, and bretluen, with a sprinkling
of young converts, filing into Wallack's of an
evening, to assist at the purification of the
comedy. It would only be equalled by a fesfive assembly of the like characters striving to
smile benign, and yet superior, on the occasion,
while, with King David in mind for model, and
Herodias' daughter for warning, they glided in
Quixotic benevolence through the stately quadrille, blandly hoping thereby to reclaim the
dance from the vain world to the pious nurture
of the Church.
But it is too serious a matter for irony.
There is no other social usage whatever that in
my opinion is, directly and indirectly, chargeable with producing more of the ill-health,
which, destroying the life-long comfort of our
wives, our sisters, and our mothers, is steadily
diluting and corrupting, at its source, the blood
32 
MODERN SOCIETY.
of our civilization. The general system of late
hours, which has grafted its monstrous absurdity upon our modern social life, is probably
traceable to the dance. Viewed from without,
the dance is essentially a spectacle, and a spectacle does not love daylight. It naturally seeks
a less discriminating and a more suggesting illumination. Or else, from the interior point of
view, the dance is a syncope of abandonment to
sensuous pleasure; and sensuous pleasure is a
dream which cannot "feel the truth and stir of
day" without losing something of that delicious
self-forgetfulness which is necessary to its perfeet bliss. In truth, the dance, raised to a kind
of autocracy, has dictated to us in the whole
conduct of our social life. It has prescribed midnight hours, tight-lacing, paper-soled shoes-in
short, a good number of those hurtful usages
which distort the development of modemrn society. For whatever will serve to heighten the
illusion and seductiveness of the dance-whether
it be late hours, with the glare of artificial light
which they make necessary, small waists, to
render the female form as insect-like as possible,
33
.1 
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that it may resemble some imaginary sylph,
rather than that grand old mother Eve, whom
God created for a wife to Adam-or whether it
be their dress, floating like a fleecy cloud about
the person of the wearer-no matter what it be,
provided only it will set off the dance-Fashion
decrees it and-women adopt it. Thus much for
the dance as a matter of health. There will be
implications under the concluding division of
the subject, that touching morality, which, reflecting their influence backward upon the first,
will involve men and women together in physical as well as moral injury from the dance to
even a more serious degree. For the dance is
not without vital relation to that vice which
is now getting discussed afresh in the newspapers under the euphemism of the "Social Cancer." The spirit of fairness of course obliges
me to admit that the extravagances named as
attaching to the dance are not always carried to
equal lengths.
II. I am next to consider the dance as it
bears upon the matter of Expenditure. This is
certainly a subordinate view of the subject, but
34 
MODERN SOCIETY.
it is one nevertheless sufficiently important to
deserve a moment's attention. No student of
history needs to be reminded that there is a
close connection between the sumptuary habits
of a people and that people's moral and physical virility. Luxury is implacable foe to longevity, whether of nation or of individual.
The dance, I have said, is, so far as concerns
what  passes  externally,  a  spectacle.   (The
chorus of invisible sensations and emotions in
the bosoms of the participants, is a spectacle
too-to the angels!)  It is frequently pleaded
for on the ground of its graceful and picturesque effect to the eye. Everything that can
contribute to enhance this scenic effect is
sought for with eager ingenuity. The more
splendid the saloon, the more sumptuous the
appointments, the more brilliant the assembly
-the greater the social success. Accordingly,
no end to the rivalry of ladies in attempting to
eclipse each other in the costly display of furniture, of service, of dress, and of jewelry. This
barbaric competition in lavishness of expenditure, taking its start from the Tuileries, travels
35
.1' 
THE DANCE OF
outward and downward, through every quarteT
of Christendom, (the unavoidable irony of the
word!) and through every grade of society. It
tends to impoverish every noble human need to
enrich the insatiable shrine of Fashion.
That what I say is true any gossipping letter
of social news (always a feature of leading journals, especially while society is holding its court
at the sea-side, or at watering-places,) giving an
account of some gay party or ball, is witness.
Every reader is familiar with the penny-a-liner's
detail and fine writing with which the greedy
fashionable public, and perhaps a still more
numerous public not initiated, and green with
envy of the fashionable public-very green-is
informed how the elegant M\rs. A           was
dressed, and what length of trail she drewhow many thousand dollars in diamonds flashed
like fireflies out of the darkness from the raven
tresses of Mrs. B's hair, and so on to the
end of the alphabet. What does not thus ob tain the prize of newspaper publicity, never theless forms the staple of private correspond ence and buzzes about in ladies' small talk,
36 
MODERN SOCIETY.
until attention is atsorbed again in still more
extravagant preparation for the next magnificent affair.
Soeietv' has its' Court Gazette' in our
republican metropolis, in which the student of
our social manmlers may read every week ad
nausea,rl, the story of life as it is lived in the
gay world at home. Hie must be prepared not
to gasp with rustic amazement if he lights upon
a whole column of extremely personal gossip,
studded thick with names printed outright, in
honest letters unashamed, of ladies that have
had the good luck to deserve such mention by
a ball-dress particularly suited to their style of
beauty, or by a morning toilette, gracefully harmonized with their figure and gait on the street.
Guess, if you can, the vanity that is eating out
the heart of a society where such things have
become common. Is it not edifying to read, as
quite lately one could do, in this very newspaper,
a solemn prophet-warning to New York about
out-Paris-ing Paris?
It may be said that these excesses, which nobody will deny, are not confined to the occasion
37 
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of the dance. And it must be admitted that in
truth they are not. They are equally incident
to every so-called amusement that consists
mainly in making up a spectacle. The opera,
and sometimes the theatre, the theatre now-adays more and more I believe, are close of kin
to the dance in the respects enumerated. I
hold that in the comparatively sordid interest
of economy even, how much more in the interest of simplicity and virtue in public manners,
such forms of amusement should be sternly discountenanced. When Fashion shall miss her
chance of holding her gay and heartless court
in the ball-room and opera-house-then we may
hope to see Christian women free enough from
a tyranny whose prying and ubiquitous pettiness might have given to Philip II. of Spain
his favorite idea of kingship-free enough, I
say, to go to God's house on the Sabbath, with
out having their ejaculatory prayers on the way
disturbed by a persistent accompaniment of
misgivings as to whether the bonnets they are
compelled to wear, from the preceding season,
are not "perfect frights," because, forsooth, a
38 
MODERN SOCIETY.
trifle less exquisitely ridiculous than those of the
style which has just superseded them! I may
be wrong, but it seems to me that the dance,
being formed upon the idea of a spectacle, and
converting especially every lady participant
in it into an object to be gazed at, and to court
admiration, as the joint chef d'auvre of the milliner, of the jeweller, and of the hairdresserit might be unfair not to add also of the dancing-master-the dance being thus essentially for
the exhibition of the woman as a thing rather
than as a person, as a miracle of decorated exterior, rather than as the heiress of a priceless
heart, and of a beautiful and beautified mind
-the dance being such has largely contributed
to the creation of that meretricious taste in
dress which seriously threatens, through its direct and indirect economic influence, to corrupt
and deteriorate the very basis of our American
society. True it is that the comparatively unpretending and innocent dancing parties, which
take place in less utterly frivolous circles of society, stop far short of the monstrous extremes
that I have described. But the tendency is
39 
THE DANCE OF
one. All rivers run to the sea. These smaller
assemblies are feeders to the larger. And the
law issues from the ball-room to the private
parlor, just as to private theatricals the law descends from the more elaborate scenic display
of the theatre.
III. I am, in the third place, to estimate the
effect of the dance upon the development of
the Social Nature.
The dance is customarily spoken of as a social
amusement. If society consists in mere congregation of human persons, then the dance
may perhaps substantiate its claim to be a social amusement. But if; on the contrary, the
social life of mankind consists rather in the con
tact of soul with soul, and in commerce of mutual thought, and feeling, and experience, then
I maintain that the dance is not only not proper]y social, but is irreconcilably opposed to society. I think that the distinction should bc
remembered and recognized in our selection of
words. It is an abuse of language to call a
herding together of people moving about, no
matter with how much rhythmic and kaleido
40
.1 
MODERN SOCIETY.
scopic grace, to music, an exemplification of
human social life. If we needs must have a
stock epithet to characterize the thing, better
call the dance a gregarious amusement, and
leave the nobler adjective for consecration to a
form of human intercourse in which speech
plays some part to distinguish it from the massing together of a jostling crowd of mute or
merely gibbering animals.
Am I unfair to the dance?  No doubt the
view of it which I am presenting may be novel
to those easily contented, because unreflecting,
minds who willingly resign themselves to be
cheated with the jugglery of words. Because
it is the fashion to class the dance among the
social entertainments, most persons passively let
it go under that disguise. But strip off the
epithet that belies it, and scan it once in its
nakedness, and if it does not appear as grim a
sham, for an exercise of the social nature, as
ever imposed upon intelligent men and women
-why then I must confess myself to have mis conceived the truth concerning what social en joyment for the human race should be.
41 
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Not long ago, at a dancing party, it was remarked by a lady, herself I believe a participant
in the exercise, to a person of my acquaintance,
"I wish there were not so much dancing as
there is; it seems impossible to get acquainted
with each other!"  That woman at least had
got a peep, probably without knowing it, under
the impudent mask which still, to the most,
makes the dance seem a social amusement.
No wonder the dance is patronized, as it is,
by diplomatists and politicians. Not all have
Talleyrand's art to realize his definition of the
use of language and conceal their thoughts by
words.* And since it is necessary so often, for
public and political purposes, that thoughts
should be concealed, how invaluable a device for
* A friend, learned in such curious points, has shown
me a passage in G(oldsmith's prose where the fine phrase
traditionally ascribed to the Frenchman, seems almost to
have been anticipated. But Voltaire's proud boast, that
when the Almighty wished a thought to make the circuit
of the world, he kindled it in the heart of a Frenchmain,
has here its humble fulfillment; for this mot, barbed as it
is, with the fitness in it to Talleyrand's character, has
found a currency in the mouths of men which hardly any
other authorship supposable could have given it.
42 
MODERN SOCIETY.
statesmen is an institution like the dance, which
shall enable them to gratify society by condescending to be social, without running the risk of
saying more than a dozen consecutive words in
the course of an evening!
But it is often insisted that the dance is unrivalled for the ease and grace it imparts to the
carriage and manners, thus at least removing
the friction with which the want of external
polish hinders the pleasurable interflow of individuals in society. I indulge my private guess
of at least one Christian man, no longer conspicuous even in his own denominational circles,
who, transferred for a time by Providence from
the pastor's personal wrestle with the foes which
beleaguer youth to a sphere of less publicity,
where large and liberal views of worldly conformity were easier to entertain, capitulated tc
this temptation, and suffered his children to go
where the dancing master might soften the natural angularity of their movements into the
flowing curves said to approximate more nearly
to the ideal of perfect grace. Alas, alas! I Does
not even the poet teach the Christian teacher a
deeper lesson than that?
43 
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For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature, and of noble mind.
If such hirelings as Christian parents are able
to secure to teach, in the capacity of dancingmaster, elegant manners to their children, can
in the course of a few afternoons or evenings
impart to them a life-long effect of improvement, what might not be hoped for, if the home
itself were made a school of grace and courtesy,
in which the heart should be taught to tone the
voice, and light the eye, and mould the mien,
and modulate all to the rhythmical mood of undissimulated love? Who has ever compared the
Peter that  obtrudes  his uncouth figure  in
glimpses here and there through the gospels, with
the Peter that afterwards betrays so ineffable
a grace of high-bred courtesy in his epistleswho has ever considered the transformation that
had passed upon this man in the school of
Chrisi, making the Galilean the cosmopolite,
the fisherman the gentleman,-who has done
this and not perceived that the last accomplishment of the manners is elsewhere to be sought
than at the hands of M. Martinet, the dancingmaster?
44
I 
MODERN SOCIETY.
While something, nevertheless, may in fairness
be conceded here to the dance, a very little observation accompanied with a very little reflection will, I think, suffice to convince a candid mind that the institution is hardly all, even
in this respect, that is claimed for it by its more
enthusiastic, and especially its professional, devotees.  It is certainly a service to the social
interests of men, if the dance does help to create
that unselfishness between person and person,
which morality enjoins upon us all as politeness,
or even to create that affectation of this, which
we are all of us so well content to accept in stead of politeness. This is the element in
which mutual intercourse must be transacted, if
it is to be a source either of pleasure or of profit.
I would be the last to deny the debt, if the
dance can show that it does indeed supply such
a neutral condition of lubricity to the agreeable
mingling of people in society, witaout at the
same time overbalancing its credit with deduc tions chargeable on this very score.
What is the true state of the case?  There
is, to my mind, something fairly august in the
45 
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arrogant self-assertion of the dance. It awes
one-it takes away one's breath-one.s uncer tain for a moment or two in its presence whether
his first principles of courtesy and good breeding may not, by some hocus-pocus, have got exactly reversed without his being aware of it.
This social amusement flouts you with such
utterly pitiless, such Gorgonizing insolence,
Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes,
-if you happen to get into its way! Until
you recover your self-possession, you rather believe that it must mysteriously be in accordance
with everlasting principles of politeness that
you should be flouted. Yon are in the unenviable condition of that morbidly modest man,
whom Robert HIall describes as seeming by his
manner to be asking pardon of everybody for
taking the liberty to exist. I have seen a good
many people who never rally from this uncomfortable hallucination in the presence of the
dance. The dance plants one foot of its unlimitedly expansible compasses in a parlor, and
thence widening its sweep, room by room, gradually and serenely encircles the entire area of
46 
MODERN SOCIETY.
the house that is open to guests.  Happy then
the mortals who do not dance, if they can find
a secure retreat in hall or entry. Those who
shrink into corners, and those who desperately
cling to the walls, shall not escape a whisk of
the tumultuous dress, or a thrust of the importunate elbow, to disturb the serenity of their
meditations on the graceful elegance of this extremely social amusement. That grave Chinaman, who gazed with the well-schooled wonder
of a Celestial on the spectacle of the dance as
exhibited by a company of ELuropeans, betrayed
his innocent ignorance of the real fascination
of the thing, but he certainly discovered its
utter hollowness, regarded merely as a social
enjoyment, when he asked, "Pray, why do you
not let your servants do that for you!" Is the
fact that the dance lubricates the individual
manners, or that its introduction breaks the ice
of first reserve which embarrasses the freedom
of an evening's company;-giving conversation
forsooth such an elan that it is dispensed with
from that moment forward- is this two-fold
fact, admitted, a fair offset to the gross, the
47 
THE DANCE OF
egregious ill-manners upon which I have commented? It must be added that provident and
resourceful hostesses guard against such abuse
of their hospitality by assigning one side of the
house to those who trip it as they go, and the
other to those who prefer to preserve postures
of stable equilibrium-that is to say, by virtually making two parties at once.
I remember hearing the celebrated M. Bautain, in one of his lectures at the Sorbonne on
some subject of theology, going aside from his
main discussion, lament the decline in France
of the art of conversation.   Bon  vivant that
he appeared in his redundant vhysigue, it was
almost whimsical to hear him attribute the misfortune to the habit of after-dinner smoking-a
habit against which nothing about the lecturer
himself seemed to protest along with his words,
except his interdictory quality of Romish ecclesiastic. Hie thought that the post-prandial
cigar, banishing men from the influence supposed to rain from ladies' eyes at jousts of wit
as well as of arms, and enveloping them in a
haze of oblivious torpor-had chilled the genial
48 
MODERX SOCIETY.
currents of that conversational enthusiasm
which once made the table-talk of Frenchmen
the admiration of cultivated Europe.
Now it may well be that what might be called
the high art of conversation, such, for example,
as created the nurturing atmosphere for a production like the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, is not materially injured by the dance: for
however much the literary magicians may patronize the exercise as a matter of esthetics, or
approve it as a matter of morals, they can
hardly be imagined very sedulous devotees of it
as a matter of practice: but assuredly, had M.
Bautain spoken from the point of view of average American society, he would have been
nearer the truth in representing conversation, as
a diffused and popular accomplishment, to be
in danger of extinction from the usurping dominion of the dance.
IV. I have now, in immediate sequence to
the foregoing, to investigate the influence of the
dance on the Intellectual Improvement of Societv.
4
49 
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Our American life is, from the virtual compulsion of circumstances, so much absorbed in
attention to material interests that as a people
we have little time, at the best, to devote to the
interior culture of ourselves.   Literature and
art, books, pictures, and the other various objects of elegant taste, these truly rational topics of interest to enlightened minds, have the
very narrowest chance, even with earnest intentions on our part, to produce their elevating
and chastening effect upon our lives. Is it not
shame to us that the golden hours, all too few,
in which we might exchange with each other
the thoughts inspired by themes like these, to
our mutual profiting, should be recklessly squandered upon a laborious bodily exercise, in whieb
monkeys might be trained to display greater
agility than we, and bears a statelier gravity?
What a confession for our young men and
young women to make that they find it impossible to get an evening's company to go off well
without the dance! How muich mental vacuity
-what aching and echoing cranial room for
knowledge-does such a ( onfession imply!
50 
MODERN SOCIETY.
Oh, young men!  Oh, young women!  American brothers and sisters, say,-would it not be
better if you should create and sustain courses
of lectures for some of your winter eveningsif you should patronize the circulating libraries,
or even the book-stores-if you should subscribe to some of the literary periodicals (but
you will have to wait now until you become a
public fit to support them, before you can find
many very good at home)-if you should organize reading-clubs, and amateur art associations-in short if you should spend a share at
least of the time and of the money that you
can command, in acquiring such resources of
mind, that you would not be obliged to whirl
each other off into a dance when you assemble
for an evening together, lest forsooth you should
not be able to think of anything to say, to relieve the awkardness of silence? I am met
with, "Better to dance than to talk and slander your neighbors?"  True, but so perhaps it
is better to steal than to commit murder. But
those who refrain from stealing are not there fore obliged to commit murder. And those
51 
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who refrain from dancing are not o)bliged to
slander their neighbors. There is conversation
which neither abuses the absent, nor yet injures the participants in it. But the art of
such conversation is indeed far gone towards
being lost to a generation that will frisk, like
Donatello, and fly into the dance, to dodge a
fair and friendly encounter of mind with mind.
I am aware that it may be replied: "What
we want is amusement. The mental activity
you are recommending is not recreation." A
sound philosophy of recreation would require,
that those portions of our complex organism
which are wearied should be permitted to rest,
while, on the other hand, those which have been
left comparatively unemployed should at the
same time be brought into play. Now how
many of our young people in ordinary society,
exert their minds so strenuously, that their
health demands a period of mental repose? By
all means let such relax the excessive strain.
But assuredly those who find it out of the question to make an evening's entertainment pass
off respectably without i troducing the dance
52 
MODERN SOCIETY.
to take the place of conversation, will not claim
to be of the number. No; the people who
compose society are rather, if they but knew it,
fairly tired to death with everlasting amusement. It is their business to seek pleasure, and
11o merchant pushes his traffic harder. It would
be positive recreation to these devotees of society, if they would set themselves at some
work that should bring their languishing minds
into action. And then the clerks, for example,
who are on their feet all day, in a confined atmosphere-is it not too severe a jocularity to
call it recreation, for these leg-weary mortals to
dance most of the night, as if their hope of usefulness depended upon their assiduity in it? Is
it not clear that what such young men need for
diversion, is something to employ their minds,
on matters aside from business, while their tired
muscular system refreshes itself with rest? Due
mental exercise is perhaps as essential to health
as is exercise of the body.
But I have said enough on these minor
topics of my discussion. The chief topic still
remains to be discussed. I have expressed my
53 
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self with severity; but my readers will surely
suffer me to be a little out of humor with a
usurpation, which tyrannizes to such disastrous
purpose, over so fair a realm of human life.
V. I come finally to the consideration of the
dance in its moral aspects. I use the word
"moral," without designing to distinguish it
from "religious."  I am of the number of those
who believe that morality, rightly conceived of,
is the same thing as religion, rightly conceived
of.  If the dance then is consistent with pure
morality, it is also consistent with true religion.
If it is a proper amusement for the world, it is
equally a proper amusement for the church. If
it is morally suitable for the irreligious young
man who hears a sermon, to dance, it is likewise
morally suitable for the minister who preaches
the sermon, to dance at his side. The question
remains now to be considered, Is the dance juLstifiable on moral grounds?
When the dance is accused, as I have accused
it, of being injurious to the health, of breeding
extravagance in expenditure, of hindering social enjoyment and profit, and of dissipating
54
I 
MODERN SOCIETY.
the opportunities of intellectual improvement,
the rejoinder is commonly made that at least it
is in itself an innocent, if not a useful way of
spending the evening hours.  "Besides it is delightful," say enthusiastic young ladies "We
take no note of time, when we dance, and are
conscious of no fatigue. The music moves us
almost without our effort. It is actually easier
to dance, when the fiddle is going, than it is to
keep still." Well, if this be so, useless as it
seems in a utilitarian point of view, and fatal
to self-culture, still, if it be so indescribably delighltful, and at the same time notpositively in.
jurious to good morals, why  I, for my part,
say, By all means dance and have a fine time.
Pity-pity, to be sure, that you have not whole some earnestness enough, in some worthy direc tion, to make the frivolity distasteful; but if you
have not, then there is probably nothing better
for you, than to resemble those natives on the
roast of Africa, of whom it is related that they
begged their musical European visitor to cease
fiddling, lest they perforce danced themselves
to death. But is the dance morally unobjec  tionable?
55 
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I have, it at true, in part forstalled my reply.
For it would be strictly legitimate to enlarge
on the vicious tendencies always engendered by
such extravagant expenditure as the dance en courages, and almost requires, upon the sordid
ambition it inspires to outshine one's social
peers, and the low pride begotten by success
among those victorious in this barbaric rivalry,
with the consequent chagrin, and heart-burning,
and secret jealousy, that follow in the breasts of
the disappointed, upon its deplorable effect in
bounding the personal aspiration to exterior
elegance in looks and dress, and manners-it
would be legitimate, I say, in settling the moral
propriety of the usage in question, to dwell on
these things, and I might use unstinted fi-eedom of language respecting them. But serious
as they are, they by no means constitute the
gravamen of the indictment which I bring
against the dance as enemy to public morality.
There are graver moral considerations still, involved in the subject, to which  I desire my
readers to give their thoughtful attention.
These considerations, however, are such, that
56 
MODERN SOCIETY.
though they move my feeling to the highest
pitch of moral indignation, I nevertheless must
pick my expressions with the utmost care, lest
I offend the decorum which the chaste spirit of
Christian refinement has taught us to observe
and to demand in speech. There is an infinite
slough of pollution, but scantily crusted over,
under your feet now, whichever way you turn.
Incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.
Alas, that the fatal faux pas, which lets the
adventuirer down, is so much more frequently
taken in the actual experience of life, than in
terms of allusion by speech!
/The dance, then, to say it at once, and plainly, is an immoral amusement, immoral I mean
in itself.  Of course I am not now traversing
the statement with which I set out, that dancing in itself is perfectly innocent. This I assert again. But I must remind my readers
that dancing in itself is not under discussion.
I am dealing with a very different affair indeed
-a concrete thing, a substance with accidents,
57 
THE DANCE OF
say rather a substance whose essence consists in
its accidents-a social institution, well-determined in form, and hitherto as persistent as
force-or as sin-I am dealing with TIE DANCE.
Now dancing does certainly occur in the dance
-but so does breathing; and one comes just
as near constituting the dance as the other.
I shall seem paradoxical to many, and I will
explain.   In a single word,  dancing is one
thing and the dance is another. The dance is
dancing under certain conditions well understood. The dance, by reason of these constant
conditions, is an amusement immoral in itself.
Dancing is an exercise which may be perfectly
harmless. I should have no objection in the
world to a dance in which the only participants
were children too young to be conscious of sex,
and necessarily incapable of any pleasure in it,
except that of associated and rhythmical motion. Boys and girls might knit hands and beat
the ground together in it to their hearts' content, just as they might romp together in field
or wood.  (As a point of hygiene, and of esthetic even, I should generally insist that it be
58 
MODERN SOCIETY.
the ground they beat, and not a floor, much less
a carpeted floor.) I should have no objection
to a dance in which the participants were exclusively males, of whatever age, or to one in
which the participants were exclusively females,
of whatever age. I should have no objection
to a dance in which the participation was confined to the brothers and sisters of one household, and the parents and grandparents, for that
matter, if they liked, might join in it with the
utmost propriety. This style of "parlor dancing" I would cheerfully permit if I were the
Solon of society. But I should be Dracouian
enough to exclude neighbors' children, intimate
friends and cousins of every degree-as long at
least as human nature continues such that these
marry and are given in marriage with each
other. These might, to be sure, be present and
witness the Terpsichorean performances of the
family; but I am afraid that the mere spectacle
of such domestic felicity would be voted a
rather tame entertainment. In fact, such is
human depravity, I have my misgivings that
the older brothers and sisters of the household
59 
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would almost as lief go back to their Sunday
school as to engage in so entirely innocent a
diversion.
Upon condition that the prevailing moral
tone of society were such as to keep the dance
strictly within these limits, I would enter into
bonds to be the very last to wag a tongie
against it.  I seriously suspect, however, that
this "peculiar institution" of society, so circun,
scribed, would follow a late notable example
and refise to survive its indignation at the insult.
It would be the extreme of narrowness not
to admit, as I cheerfully do, that the limits thus
laid down for the perfectly safe circumscription
of the dance, might be enlarged a little now
and then without serious risk. I have seen
companies assembled much more promiscuous
in their composition than those described above,
in which I veritably think, nevertheless, that
the evil likely to arise from a brief indulgence
in the dance would be quite infinitesimal in
amount. But this admission, made in the utmost good faith, really concedes nothing of any
60 
MODERN SOCIETY.
practical value.  The trouble is, that beyond
these limits a vigilant discrimination of persons proper to be included would be necessary.
This discrimination would be extremely difficult often in thought, and it would be infinitely
delicate in fact. Besides, there is nobody to
make the discrimination. It would involve on
many occasions the exercise of a very invidious
censorship over the moral character of your
neighbors and acquaintances-a censorship so
invidious that it would never be undertaken.
Suppose, for instance, your family, enlivened by
the casual dropping in of the neighbor next
door on one side, an unexceptionable man, happened to be chasing the glowing hours of an
evening with flying feet. The "parlor dancing,"
often so stoutly contended for, is usually described as springing up spontaneously in some
such unceremonious way. So far I acknowledge
the harm is purely theoretical-probably. But
while this is in progress, the neighbor next door
on the other side calls too, in no wise conscious
of the music and dancing, but led simply by a
spirit in his feet.  Everybody knows that next
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door neighbors are always the best of neighbors, but, unhappily, not always the most irreproachable of men. This second caller is not
beyond reproach.  But that does not prevent
his being fond of the dance, and being, moreover, a very graceful dancer.  What is to be
done?  Shall the dance stop?  But if it does
not, where is your principle of discrimination?
It is an impossible discrimination, or so difficult
that if faithfully applied, the dance would soon
die a natural death.  It would not seem worth
the trouble of keeping it alive. I desire, however, to make it distinctly understood, that to
such hypothetical cases of dancing as have thus
been described, the severe language which will
follow, both in the text and in the notes, is not
intended to apply.
But at this point some one, beginning reluctantly to feel the truth of my remarks, demurs,
"What new  asceticism have we here?  The
principle you imply would separate the sexes
equally, in every other species of social intercourse. If mutual consciousness of sex is tihe
circumstance which makes it immoral for men
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MODERN SOCIETY.
and women to dance with each other, then how
is it not also immoral for them ever to talk with
each other, since this troublesome consciousness
is likely at any moment to intervene between
them? Is it not rather the rational, and preeminently the Christian, philosophy of the relation of man and woman that they should recognize and enjoy the exqlisite sense of difference,
put from the beginning between them to create
the possibility of that transcendent affection
whose
dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Is not this the common sense of thle subject
I certainly think that it is. And it is precisely because I would guard this most delicate
bloom of all human delight from the gross and
comnmon handling which soils its purity, that I
use the language I do. Can we forget that it is
the best use which is liable to the worst abuse?
Do we not know that the relation of the sexes,
which was to have overflowed the world as a
fountain of Paradise, has been perverted into
the prolific cause of more crime and misery
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than any other single thing that can be named?
And shall I not cry shame upon a usage that,
under cover of respectability, regularly titillates
and tantalizes an animal appetite as insatiable
as hunger, more cruel than revenge?
-Iy accusation is that the dance, instead of
affording an opportunity for mutually ennobling
companionship between man and woman, inspired with a chaste and sweet interfused remembrance of their contrasted relationship to
each other-that the dance, instead of this,
consists substantially of a system of means contrived with more than human ingenuity to excite the instincts of sex to action, however
subtle and disguised at the moment, in its sequel
the most bestial and degrading. I charge that
here, and not elsewhere, in the anatomy of that
elusive fascination which belongs so peculiarly
to the dance, the scalpel is laid upon the quivering secret of life.  Passion-passion transformed if you please never so much, subsisting in
no matter how many finely contrasted degrees
of sensuality —passion, and nothing else is the
true basis of the popularity of the dance.
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MODERN SOCIETY.
I shlrink almost uncontrollably from this statement, now that I have made it; and many times
since I first assumed so bold a position I have
been tempted to recede from it, overborne by the
arguments, and still more by the sweet personal
magnetism of friends of my own sex whose fortunate individual exemption from infirmity disqualifies  them from allowing that my views are
other than Puritanic, or at least morally "dye
peptic." It is not pleasant to be a voice crying
in the wilderness. Still less is it pleasant to be
sent  to XNineveh on an errand of Jonah.  I am
so fa r influenced as to admit that there must be
numerous inlstances of exception to the general
rule.        But the general rule, and not the exceptions, should determine our line of conduct. It
is a case so peculiar that the exceptions cannot
safely be admitted even to exercise an influence
ill determining our line of conduct. On the
other hand, too, I think it right to say that
since the first publication of my views, I have
received volunteer testimony from so many
quarters, and from quarters representing such
diametric diversity of moral and social charac
5
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ter and position, corroborative of them fro)7&
experience, that I find it impossible to qualify
them now by a single degree. One man inl
particular, my acquaintance with whom, commenced in the earliest boyhood, and uninterrupted since, permits an unreserve of expression
between us such as is seldom incident to later
formed acquaintanceship, has emphatically confessed to me his wonder that a person who never
danced himself should have been able so plainly
and fully to tell the truth about dancing. And
no man knows what the whole of the truth
about it is better than he. Nor let it be supposed that I commit so vulgar an error as that of
attaching undue weight to the testimony of one
likely to have projected his own moral chlaracter upon the innocent companionship of his
guilty pleasure. If it were proper to do sc,
even in this anonymous way, I could cite an
equally striking corroborative expression, conveyed to me through an unquestionable medium,
from one whom I never met, but who, at every
point, save common experience in dancing, is
in the most antipodal contrast to the witness
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MODERN  SOCIETY.
just mentioned. I am forced to conclude that
the devotees of the dance differ among them
selves, not so much in the influence received
from participation in it as in their intelligent
consciousness of that influence.
It is no accident that the dance is what it is.
It mingles the sexes in such closeness of personal approach and contact as, outside of the dance,
is nowhere tolerated in respectable society. It
does this under a complexity of circumstances
that conspire to heighten the impropriety of it.
It is evening and the hour is late, there is the
delicious and unconscious intoxication of music
and motion in the blood, there is the strange,
confusing sense of being individually unobserved among so many, while yet the natural
"noble shame," which guards the purity of man
and woman alone together, is absent-such is
the occasion, and still, hour after hour, the
dance whirls its giddy kaleidoscope around,
bringing hearts so near that they almost beat
against each other, mixing the warm, mutual
breaths, darting the fine personal electricity
across between the meeting fingers, flushing the
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face and lighting the eyes with a quick languLage, subject often to gross interpretations on
the part of the vile-hearted-why, this fashionable institution seems to me to have been invented in an unfriendly quarter, usually conceived of as situated under us, to give our
human passions leave to disport themselves, unreproved by conscience, by reason, or by shame,
almost at their will. I will not trust myself to
speak of this further. My indignation waxes
hotter than can well be controlled. I even
seem to myself to have contracted some soil
from having merely described truthfully what
thousands of fellow-Christians, ignorant of
themselves, practice without swallowing a
qualm!*
* With the sincerest reluctance, I bring myself to subjoin a remark bearing on this point, once overheard on carboard by a friend of mine, in a conversation that was
passing between two young men about their lady acquaintances. The horrible concreteness of the fellow's
expression may give a wholesome recoil from their danger
to some minds that would be little affected by a speculative statement of the same idea.  Said one: "I would not
give a straw to dance with Miss. You can't excite
any more passion in her than you can in a stick of wood 1"
68 
MODERN SOCIETY.
I say that the dance is not fortuitously such.
It is such essentially.  Its real nature is shown
by what it constantly tends to become, in new
figures, introduced stealthily, from time to time,
(umder silent protest from many who suffer their
modesty to be overborne by the fear of being
charged with prudery) a little more doubtful
than the old, and in wanton whirls, like the
waltz and the polka.  Always the dance inclines
to multiply opportunities of physical proximity
Pure young women of a warmer temperament, that innocently abandon themselves to enthusiastic proclamations
of their delight in the dance in the presence of gentlemen, should but barely once have a male intuition of the
meaning of the involuntary glance that will often shoot
across from eye to eye among their auditors. Or the
should overhear the comments exchanged among them
afterwards. For when young men meet after an evening
of the dance to talk it over together, it is not points of
dress they discuss. Their only demand, and it is generally conceded, is that ladies' dress shall not needlessly embarrass suggestion. Believe me, however women escape
without the smell of fire upon their garments, men often
do not get out of the furnace, save with a flame devouring
them, that they seek strange fountains, and willingly
damn their souls. to quench.
It tasks a resolutely firm nerve to speak thus of things
that braze it out before the world and the church, only foI
want of being thus spoken of.
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and contact between the sexes, always to make
them more prolonged and more daring.  In
fii,e, the dance adds that last ingredient of perfeet bliss, whose absence the witty Frenchwoman bethought herself, in the midst of some
innocent enjoyment, to mourn-with a pathos
more pathetic than they dream who see nothing
but a whimsical humor in the saying-" JXon
S)ieu! how delightful this is! It would be
quite perfect, if there were only a little sin
in it."
But if what has already been said and suggested fails to convince any that my analysis
of the pleasure of the dance is true, I have a
little problem to propose for their solution:
WAy is it that the dance alone, of all the favorite diversions of gay sociee, requires the association of the two sexes in it?  The problem is
not solved by the ready reply, "Why, the
pleasure of social intercourse is always heightened when both sexes participate in it. We
enjoy an evening of cards the better for this
piquant commingling!"   But you have missed
the point of the problem. The question is not,
70
I. % *  
MODERN SOCIETY.
Wlhy do you enjoy the dance more when men
and women execute it together? but, Whly must
men and women execute it together in order that
they should enjoy it at a,l? No doubt a game of
cards may be much more bewitching, while not
an iota more hurtful, for the meeting of the
Eexes at the table. But then cheaply figured
parallelograms of paste-board have charms for
thleir devotees of either se:, which enable them
to dispense with the society of the other.  Men,
young and oldl, often sit tihe night out in bachelor conviviality around a card-table.  Yoimg
ladies, and sometimes their mammas with them,
I believe, will interminably shuffle and deal
far on  into  the hours  affectionately called
"small" by those who know how to make them
seem so with revel-all quite without the company of gentlemen.'Bit come to the dance
and what a difference! Where do young ladies
keep up their practice of calisthenics after leaving, boarding-school? What bachelor club exists anywhere that devotes an evening to the
dance among its members?  Pensive and imaginative young  ladies might possibly, here and
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there, of a lonesome evening, seek to revive a
diluted illusion of past pleasure, by a few strictly maiden measures  executed with soon exhausted enthusiasm, but men with men-hardly!
— unless perhaps in broad farce to poiint a
whimsical contrast.  With  reference to such
a style of dancing at least, the pagan sarcasm
of Cicero is likely long to retain a Christian
application —Yemo fere  saltat sobrius,  nisi
forte insamit.
The characteristic thus established as belonging to the dance, in distinction from every other
form of popular amusement, is full of instructive implication to those who are accustomed to
inquire for the causes of things. Of course I
know how indignantly the accusation of impurity in their enjoyment of the dance will be repelled by the great majority of its votaries.
And I am very ready to admit the indignation
as entirely honest; for I have no doubt that the
element of unchastity in it, rarely absent in
some more or less refined quality of influence,
I most certainly believe, is yet generally unrecognized by the subject.  If only unconscious
72 
MODERN SOOIETY.
ness of evil influence were a trustworthy prophylactic against it!  Once again, and for all,
I protest with the utmost sincerity that I am
far from confounding the devotees of the dance
in an indiscriminate accusation of conscious impurity. I know too many pure-hearted women
among dancers, whom no fortunate son, or
brother, or husband, could possibly charge with
one doubtful thought, for even an instant of the
most oblivious excitement, not to be myself indignant in purging my intention of any such cruel
injustice. And in the opposite sex, too however much more exposed by nature to temptation, there are some dancers no doubt who come
very near to escaping the conscious contagion
of evil, by virtue of an instinctive chastity in
them, God's gift to a few. But, right on the
heels of so wide a disclaimer, I must re-assert
my conviction that unconsciousness does not defend even the purest minds from something of
the insinuating sensual tendency of this inherently voluptuous amusement.
And then consider, ye Christian fathers, and
brothers, and husbands, to what horrible haz
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ards of contact the opportunities of the dance
expose your daughters, and sisters, and wives.
For who, that has gained any experience of the
world, is ignorant of the fact that hardly once
does a considerable party assemble, even in the
most respectable society, without including some
man whom his associates know to be a libertine
at heart, if not in life. To think of pure
women pastured on, with palms of pollution,
and with imminent eyes of adultery, by suchb a
bull of Bashan, the evening long, in the promiscuous corral of the dance! What better facilities could be imagined for an accomplished
voluptuary to compass the capture of his
prey!*
* We shall never lose the impression made years ago
upon our mind, in the chances of western travel by packet on the canal, by hearing a practised libertine relate his
experience in the arts of female seduction. His master
secret lay, as he said with horrid complacency, in accustoming his quarry to the touch of his hands, and especially to the shock of being kissed. In this way, to use
his own brutal expression, he "tamed" the selected victims of his villany.
This article may possibly penetrate to some secluded
nook in the country where a superstitious horror, once
re-igious, still bears sway against the dance, while yet a
74 
MODERN SOCIETY.
Faughl! In the ordinary occasions of society, a
lady may let her sacred intuitions have some
play to guard her against the access of impurity in the uniform of a gentleman. But it is
the boast of the dance that it is a democrat and
a leveller, permitting no individual caprice to
break the circuit of universal equality. You
may shudder to your heart's core at the contact
that is coming-but the dance leaves you no
election-you must take it when it comes.
Blush, blush henceforth ye Christian women,
when you are invited to submit your persons to
the uses of a diversion that may at any time
choose to bring you finger-tip to finger-tip with
those whose touch is pollution, or, it may be, encircle you in their arms! I A burning blush of
speechless shame were the best reply to the insult of such an invitation.  But I plead against
an advocate more eloquent than any individu al's words.  Oh,  Fashion! Fashion!  What
variety of "kissing" plays are practised in its stead. In a
case of social demoralization like this, we could imagine
how the dance might serve a really useful turn, if introduced as a temporary stage of progress towards ultimate
more thorough reform!
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power hast thou to browbeat holy nature, so
that she dares not speak to assert her sacred
claims against thy imperious sway! I
I abruptly dispatch this hateful subject without completing the discussion of it. If my
readers have winced at the exceptional plairness of speech which I have used, I beg them
to believe that it has cost me sincere pangs of
resolution to use it. But I have written under
duress of conscience that did not suffer me to
shrink. The engineering skill of the devil has
defended the dance with a masterly dilemma
that leaves open barely two alternatives of attack about equally ineligible. You may either
exhaust your strength in demonstrating the
minor and incidental evils of the usage, in
which case you win an easy, but also a barren
victory; or you must freely encounter the peril
of damaging your own fair fame for purity,
and deliver your blow full at its inherent and
essential immorality. The author has deliberately chosen the latter alternative. iHe can trust
the honest heat of indignation that has warmed
his words to take away the offence of their ex.
76 
MODERN SOCIETY.
treme fidelity.  As for the risk of being charged
with bringing the impurity that he finds-he
contentedly accepts it.  It is a charge that two
classes of persons certainly will not prefer.
These two classess are, first, those who know
him, and secondly, those who know themselves.
THE END.
77