I.1KKA.KV 
 
 University of California- 
 
 Received iAN 1895 , i8g 
 
 Accessions No.Q^^^Jl^ Chns No. 
 
 S9Yi 
 
 IT 
 
THE 
 
 DANCE OF LIFE 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 witin funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/danceoflifeansweOObowericli 
 
THE 
 
 DANCE OF LIFE 
 
 AN ANSWER TO THK 
 
 DANCE OF FJEATH", - 
 
 Mrs. Dr. J. MILTON BOWERS 
 
 UFIVBRSITT 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 San Francisco News Company 
 
 1877 
 
slrf^^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, 
 
 by Mrs. Dr. J. MiLTON BOWEKS, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, 
 
 at Washington, D. C. 
 
13 3'^ 
 
 To THE Lady Dancers of San Francisco : 
 
 In your interests, chiefly, and in your defense, 
 have I written this little book, and to your kindly 
 protection, in full confidence, I commit it. Neces- 
 sarily more a bunch of thorns than of roses, more 
 a broom than a bouquet, you will not, I trust, look 
 for beauty, but for use, as you read : for we need 
 not flowers but weapons, not grace but strength, for 
 war. 
 
 I shall not say to you, "Put yourself in my 
 place"; for mine is yours. If your feelings in 
 reading be what mine were in writing, they will 
 bear me, I know, as one of a multitude, triumph- 
 antly along. 
 
 With sisterly greeting, but without apology for 
 stepping from your ranks to check the insolence of 
 a Philistine, 
 
 I subscribe myself, 
 
 OF YOU. 
 
 ^4^ 0? THl"^ 
 
 TJiri7BIlSIT7] 
 
X 
 
 " If in the wanton gesture aught 
 Pure innocence defame*, 
 The waltz itself is not in fault, — 
 The waltzer is to blame." 
 
 " To twine around in mere embrace 
 Is but a^fancied harm ; 
 Or arm with arm to interlace 
 Gives virtue no alarm." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 N E of the best, and, when mod- 
 erately used, most innocent of 
 our social recreations is the 
 dance. And no variety of this, as to 
 either motion or music, is more attractive 
 than the Waltz. This, originating from 
 no frivolous or licentious people, but from 
 the staid and home-loving Germans, was 
 imported about 1815 into England, where 
 it soon won high favor. True, there was 
 a little outcry raised at first against it by 
 the timid or prudish of that conservative 
 island; but it kept the ground it gained, 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 and could not to-day be driven from the 
 mansions of an aristocratic caste, the 
 proudest, and, morally, the purest, per- 
 haps, in the world. 
 
 And now is it to become a dream of 
 the past, for which we may soon long in 
 vain? Shall this most natural offspring 
 of youth and joy be swept away, like 
 Hood's Midsummer Fairies, by the ruth- 
 less hand of some moral vandal or specu- 
 lator? Is the temple of the most wor- 
 shiped and worshipful of the Nine to be 
 forever closed because some sensational- 
 ist chooses to label the rite she loves 
 The Dance of Death? We think not. 
 We think that all we need do is to ex- 
 pose again the oft-recurring fallacy of 
 decrying what is useful, beautiful, or in- 
 dispensable, because it is liable to abuse ; 
 to show that any of the indispensable 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 acts of life can afford the base and law- 
 less an equal opportunity for the display 
 of their character. 
 
 A mere accident led me to answer this 
 ** Dance of Death." About two months 
 ago, a friend called my attention, while 
 in a store, to the book. The title struck 
 me as curious and ominous; and think- 
 ing, notwithstanding its fantastic exter- 
 nal, that it was some allegory of the 
 Pilgrim s Progress type, I opened it. It 
 is quite safe to say of this book what can 
 be said of few, that from any of its one 
 hundred and thirty pages you can in- 
 stantly deduce its character. I read a 
 few sentences of the preface, and was 
 still more astonished that the author 
 pleaded necessity as an excuse for the 
 publication. Thinking, then, that some 
 reasons would be found to palliate, at 
 
X • Preface. 
 
 least, its obscenity, I purchased a copy. 
 Never did any book awake within me 
 such feelings of shame and indignation. 
 Only a strong impulse to vindicate my 
 sex from its slanders (infamous as far 
 we are concerned) could have led me to 
 give it the careful perusal an answer 
 demanded. 
 
 And if, in following the author, I am 
 forced to plunge into a Stygian stream 
 of fetid impurity, my readers cannot 
 expect that I shall pass through it wholly 
 without soil. But as the external gar- 
 ments of language, however repulsive, 
 will not sully the whiteness of the soul, 
 I need make little apology to my read- 
 ers for any forced infringement on the 
 domain of the indelicate. Lest my re- 
 marks upon the author himself, however, 
 seem too personal and severe, I would 
 
Preface. • xi 
 
 remind my readers that the antecedents 
 and character of every '' revelator " are 
 proper subjects for comment and criti- 
 cism, especially when we have (as in this 
 case) no means of arriving at any direct 
 and "positive knowledge of the matter 
 whereof he speaks." 
 
 These (which, fortunately, we have 
 both voluntarily and involuntarily from 
 himself), must determine to a great ex- 
 tent what weight his assertions should 
 carry. The style, too, of a writer, as of a 
 witness, should have much influence on 
 our minds. My remarks upon the author, 
 keeping to the strict letter of the text he 
 furnishes, must be considered in no other 
 light than as argumentative. I have no 
 personal knowledge whatever of him, 
 and if I had any spleen to gratify, I 
 would not condescend to indulge it, only 
 
xii . Preface. 
 
 because he had uttered what did not 
 please me. In a word, I would use (as 
 I hope I have) the whip only of logic 
 and of just inference to chastise his 
 audacity. 
 
 I cannot foresee in what light the 
 other sex will view an effort that, from 
 its nature, can plead but inferentially 
 their cause. For their sakes I hope they 
 are able, and will soon tell the author of 
 the *' Dance," that, respecting them as 
 well as us, he ''lies — under a mistake"; 
 but, as to my own sex, if I shall gain (as 
 I doubt not) their approval and sympa- 
 thy, I shall be amply rewarded for my 
 trouble, how much soever I may be 
 censured, for the sake of consistency, by 
 some critics of the pulpit or the press. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Waltz? the mazy Waltz ! be sure 
 
 It shall not be forgot ; 
 To us it yields new life and grace, 
 
 Though the vulgar seize them not ; 
 Its rings we'll weave like children true 
 
 Of sun and moon, in our play. 
 And gain surcease of sorrow and care 
 
 With a glimpse of that joyous day, 
 When all of the madness and horror and sin 
 That fools and bigots have bred therein 
 
 From our earth shall have passed away. 
 
 J. H. Carey. 
 
 HERE are in polemics two kinds 
 of books, each almost equally- 
 difficult to answer ; the one ex- 
 hibiting good sense and sound 
 
 logic, the other, not a particle of either. 
 
 So always, in some point, les extremes se 
 
14 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 toiichent. The book before me, " 7^ he 
 Dance of Death," belongs eminently to 
 the last class, with the addition that its 
 folly is of the most pernicious kind. The 
 face of its pages shows the author to be, 
 in mechanical education, just what he dis- 
 avows — a ''professed (professional, I sup- 
 pose he means) litterateur " ; and in true 
 education, or natural development, some- 
 thing very remote from a refined and 
 cultured man. True, he seems suffi- 
 ciently well-read and acquainted with an- 
 cient writing, to treat his subject, how- 
 ever revolting, with some tact and taste ; 
 yet he hardly vails with a fig-leaf its 
 nude obscenities. Nor can we accord to 
 him even the poor merit of good inten- 
 tion ; for the internal evidence of the 
 book betrays that the author's design 
 was anything but that of " malice " 
 against vice. This is conclusively proved 
 from his own words, in his tenth chapter, 
 as we shall see. The style throughout 
 
THE DEVIL A MONK IS HE." 
 
 has all the licentious polish of the volup- 
 tuary — all the sanctimonious airs of a 
 book meant, under the guise of virtue, to 
 sap the morals of society. But, through 
 all the glamour of the book we are review- 
 ing, we detect the gloating eye and fever- 
 ish pulse. If I feel that my mind has 
 been in high revolt from the pollution of 
 its pages, my readers can judge how 
 " much good " it would do to have its 
 poison cast into the tender, receptive 
 minds of the young. Let the most blase 
 French novelist, not excluding Paul de 
 Kock, now forever hide his diminished 
 head. His worst has been outdone by 
 an American, who, avowedly palled by a 
 long career of pleasure, would fain have 
 us believe that his " sense of duty" forces 
 him to be our "moralist and guide. " Even 
 if the visionary dangers against which he 
 warns us had any reality, his book is cal- 
 culated to aggravate them tenfold, by 
 suggestions that otherwise would never 
 
 i^<>^ OP THB ^^ 
 
l6 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 enter the minds of the pure. If "to 
 the pure all things are pure," to the filthy 
 all things are filthy, and of the last no 
 one can so well point the moral as the 
 author of " The Dance of Death." 
 
 Nor need he fear that any one would be 
 so silly as to suppose him a Puritan Min- 
 ister, and still less to suppose that it is 
 merely from change of ^as^e he refuses 
 to continue the draught of the waltz, 
 which he once found so intoxicating. 
 Were this last true, he^would surely have 
 told us by what means he experienced 
 this change of heart, and gared no longer 
 to be a virgin-devouring Minotaur. 
 Must we not say of vice as of fame, 
 Vh^esque acqttirit eundo. Besides, writ- 
 ing under a nom-de-plume, his modesty(.'*) 
 would not be hurt by any admissions. 
 
 We are evidently a very nearsighted 
 community and our olfactory nerves ex- 
 ceedingly defective; for, unlike theauthor, 
 we are unable to descry the '' presence of 
 
SUUM CUIQUE. I 7 
 
 corruption" so gross as to deserve the 
 avalanche of virtuous wrath he sends 
 upon our devoted heads. Supposing 
 those who waltz cannot read (and it 
 would not be surprising that many of 
 his waltzers cannot) ought he not have 
 preached from the house-tops for their 
 benefit ? He says he knows that there are 
 many who can and do dance without an 
 impure thought, or action, and to those he 
 does not speak. Why, then, is his introduc- 
 tory scene laid in an aristocratic mansion? 
 Why not confess at once that his portrait- 
 ure of the dance refers to a bagnio, a 
 hoodlum picnic, a beer cellar, or a low- 
 class divan? The heads as well as the 
 heels of those to be found in lordly man- 
 sions are, we must presume, cultivated 
 at least to the extent that no gross license, 
 such as the author imagines, could be, 
 for an instant, tolerated. Wealth brings 
 refinement, and refinement is incompati- 
 ble with indecency. But this man in 
 
1 8 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 truth describes the manners, and gestures 
 found perhaps (though even this is doubt- 
 ful) in places devoted to vice, and not 
 those of the inmates or guests of a re- 
 spectable private dwelling. In the form- 
 er the grosser passions are rampant, and 
 rule with iron sway. 
 
 Our author s descriptions can leave us 
 but little doubt that he "knows whereof he 
 affirms;" but if he had not decency enough 
 to keep the feelings aroused in such dens 
 to himself, he should at least not outrage 
 society by asserting that they are quick- 
 ened to intensest life in its choicest circles. 
 Much as we delight in the healthful exhil- 
 aration of the dance, heaven defend us 
 from the extraordinary exaltation of 
 spirits that the author's waltz produces ; 
 from the foul imaginations that any well- 
 bred young woman would shake as a 
 pestilence from her. 
 
 But as we fear not the author s bug- 
 bears, assured that the internal mirror 
 
BEAUTY WITHOUT THE BEAST. 1 9 
 
 will reflect, for our thoughts, only what 
 we are, let us enter the scene of enchant- 
 ment, and join the throng of " lewd dan- 
 cers." Strange as it may seem, the 
 youth, beauty, and innocence, from which 
 classic sculptors and mythologists of old 
 drew their inspiration, invite us to do 
 so with irresistible allurement. Funny 
 though, that nothing savoring of a Dio- 
 nysian revel strikes the senses; no ob- 
 scene pictures meet, as they should, the 
 eye ; no Bacchic music of the cancan or 
 orchestral improvisations from a Cre- 
 morne or Mabille Jardin strike, as they 
 should, the ear; naught but the divine 
 strains of Strauss, wafting the soul from 
 earth to Olympus. As I walk into the 
 room on the arm of the doctor, my hus- 
 band (who, by the way, does not dance), 
 a great many acquaintances claim a smile 
 and a bow. I do dance readers, I am 
 happy to say, and my card is soon filled. 
 There are quite a number of small wo- 
 
20 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 men, nimble and li^^ht of foot, women 
 who seldom reach to the shoulders of 
 their partners. Strange they should 
 have so many of these ravenous beasts 
 seeking to devour them with their eye, 
 to mingle their fiery breath with — well 
 the artificial flowers in their hair perhaps, 
 that now and then tickle their noses. 
 Yes, strange, I say, how many Apollos 
 like to dance with those small women 
 who generally need no support from 
 a partner and are not given to re- 
 posing on his breast. One of Strauss' 
 best is being exquisitely played. What 
 may be our feelings and emotions, any 
 one sensible to heavenly music can tell. 
 Are the inspirations it gives, of the earth, 
 earthy, grovelling ? We forget our part- 
 ners, our friends, our surroundings, in 
 these almost sacred circlings, that like 
 the religious gyrations of the Magi, 
 permit the soul a temporary escape from 
 the body to realms above. This is the 
 
"MUSIC HATH CHARMS, ETC. 21 
 
 soul-reviving nectar that a moralistic (?) 
 speculator would dash from our lips ! 
 We seem floating through ether, far re- 
 moved from earth and its cares. We are 
 with the gods, yes, but not the sensuous, 
 impure gods of the ancients. We ex- 
 perience not the questionable pleasure of 
 Mahomet's Paradise, still less the gross 
 one of the debauchee, but something 
 altogether blissful and pure. And as its 
 last low tones die off, we mentally ex- 
 claim with Richter : 
 
 Away! away! 
 
 Thou speakest to me of things 
 
 I ne'er hath seen nor e'er shall see. 
 
 As to exhaustion, why, calisthenics or any 
 other medically-recommended exercise, 
 produces a not unhealthy fatigue. 
 
 The description the author gives of the 
 dancing of a couple is ludicrous in the 
 extreme; it utterly transcends all my 
 experience. In the name of common 
 sense, what decent woman would dance 
 
22 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 with even the most intimate relative 
 or friend in the manner he describes? 
 " Her head upon his shoulder, her face 
 upturned to his, her naked arm around 
 a strange man's neck, her swelling breast 
 heaving tumultuously against his ! ! " 
 Pshaw! If the real object of this book 
 were the destruction of the waltz, it 
 would be defeated by the utter absurd- 
 ity of the pictures. That " pure " 
 maiden so vividly described is no pure 
 maiden, but belongs to that class whose 
 motto is, ''In all essential particulars, 
 my virtue is at your disposal." A pure 
 maiden does not, act like this. She has 
 no impure postures, no indecent poses. 
 Purity is everywhere pure, chastity al- 
 ways chaste. Could a woman of the 
 high world, possessed of any refinement, 
 forget herself to this degree ? Just 
 think, reader, of the caricature with 
 which you are presented ! It was not 
 the "morals," but the intelligence of the 
 
THOUGHTS IMPURE "MATERIALIZED. 23 
 
 " printer " that was outraged when our 
 author presented him with such "copy " 
 as " her naked arm around a strange 
 man s neck ;" just as if a woman ever 
 waltzed, or could waltz, with any one in 
 that style. Let any lady whose height 
 does not exceed five feet eight inches 
 make the experiment with one even two 
 or three inches taller. 
 
 But not content with slandering my 
 sex, our author must now slander his 
 own. I am very observant of human 
 nature, yet have never seen the " faint 
 smile of triumph " on the lip of " the 
 late partner," — a triumph that seems to 
 me as visionary and intangible as the 
 horrors of this " Dance of Death." It 
 puts me in mind of a story I once heard. 
 A poor hungry man stood before a sau- 
 sage-stall with but six-pence in his 
 pocket, deliberating about the invest- 
 ment of his last cent in the purchase of 
 the huckster's suspicio us th ough savory 
 
 ^ ^^ OF THE ^ 
 
24 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 compound. He remained so long be- 
 fore the stall without purchasing that 
 the proprietor grew indignant and de- 
 manded six-pence of him on the ground 
 that he snuffed up fully six-pence worth 
 of flavor. Upon his very natural re- 
 fusal to liquidate, the woman in a rage 
 had him taken before a judge. After 
 having heard both sides of the story, 
 the judge asked the poor man for his 
 six-pence. It was mournfully handed 
 over. The London Solomon then called 
 for two plates, and placed the money 
 between them. Bidding the woman lis- 
 ten attentively, he rung violently for a 
 little while the money ; then handing it 
 back to its owner, he said, * Depart now 
 in peace, my good woman, your claim is 
 settled ; this man has snuffed the odor 
 of your sausages, and you have heard 
 the jingle of his money.' 
 
 We get on page 28 a picture of a 
 jealous husband, whom all join in ridi- 
 
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE. 25 
 
 culing. Ah ! my friends, if he be jealous, 
 he knows why, and that voluptuous wo- 
 man he calls his wife, knows why, also ; 
 for a waltz is a very little thing to be 
 jealous of. It is really a (5^-cause with- 
 out a cause. In this case, perhaps the 
 husband thought he had followed long 
 enough the intrigue going on between 
 his wife and her partner in the waltz ; 
 for these are the ones who may lose their 
 senses and give themselves up to a sen- 
 sual and degrading exaltation. No won- 
 der the husband is '' miserable, self-de- 
 spised, murderous." I do not blame him 
 for scowling and turning green from the 
 snake-bite of jealousy. 
 
 If graceful dancing, like that of Bac- 
 chus and Ariadne, had always two such 
 excellent results as those given from the 
 '*old writer," viz, to make bachelors 
 Benedicts, and to send strayaways home 
 to their wives, I do not see what more 
 our author could desire. But what non- 
 
26 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 sense to cite fables about Grecian myths 
 as arguments ! 
 
 But what an audacious flight does the 
 author's imagination take on page 31 ! 
 One of the ^'perfect'' lady-waltzers enter- 
 ing a hired hack to be driven home, very 
 slowly, by order — in the dark — ("down 
 with the curtains," says our romancist) — 
 all alone with her newly found Apollo of 
 the ball-room. Would any parent, relative, 
 escort or friend tolerate, under any cir- 
 cumstances, such a breach of etiquette, of 
 natural propriety ? Perhaps he would 
 have us believe that young ladies go to 
 private fashionable balls unattended ! Ah! 
 truly, we fear that those gay blacksmiths 
 are seldom trusted with such ductile ma- 
 terial as that of young maidens, except 
 in the fervid imaginations of people like 
 the author. But should a solitary in- 
 stance, one out of ten millions, occuf 
 wherein they are, who is to blame } 
 * The waltz, undoubtedly,' the author 
 
FIGHTS NOT OUR FOES. 27 
 
 would say ! Away with such stupid in- 
 ferences! As well blame the horses that 
 pull the carriage. It is not waltzing that 
 is the crying evil of to-day ; it is the cham- 
 pagne, the late suppers and the night 
 exposure after the hot-bath of a theatre, 
 etc., which ruin tlie young and bring them 
 to an early grave. If the author had be- 
 thought him to assail these evils as em- 
 phatically as he did the waltz, some real 
 and solid good might have resulted. I 
 am far from favoring all the dances of to- 
 day — some savor too much of vulgarity — 
 but the objectionable ones, such as the 
 " Boston Dip," are vetoed in good, if not 
 in fast society, and will eventually die out 
 altogether. Declaim against these if you 
 will, but leave us our delicious, soul-in- 
 spiring waltz. 
 
 The author's tirade is not alone against 
 the waltz, but the waltzers, calling the 
 latter of my sex names that I cannot re- 
 print. What gentleman would descend, 
 
28 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 needlessly, to sully his pages with the 
 epithets Mr. Herman continually uses. 
 Such language, however, exposes the 
 man and his motive. If he have any ill- 
 wishers, they need no longer yearn for 
 vengeance, in the subtle words of the 
 sage : " Oh ! that mine enemy would 
 write a book!" He anticipates this 
 charge, of course, as he does many others, 
 pleading the excuse of necessity for thrust- 
 ing his " putridity under our nostrils." It 
 was rank enough, heaven knows, in idea 
 without intensifying it by word. But 
 "his peace of mind" and anxiety "for 
 what our morals ought to be," demanded 
 this! He would be the last to wound 
 pure and delicate minds by grossness of 
 idea or expression ! It is, of course, no 
 cheap clap-trap with him to declare that 
 he would " prefer his right hand to with- 
 er than to give offense to one "! ! H is book 
 is circulating now freely, I understand, 
 just where it will do most harm — just 
 
THE **D. D. IN THE SCHOOLS. 29 
 
 where, undoubtedly, it will produce meet 
 fruit. If we sow the wind, what can we 
 reap but the whirlwind ! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 At every ball 
 My wife now waltzes and my daughters shall. 
 
 Byron, 
 
 T THE head of chapter 1 1 of the 
 '* Dance," we have the follow- 
 ing from Petrarch : 
 
 " The dance is the spur of lust — a circle of which the devil 
 is the center. Many women that use it have come dishonest 
 home, rrtost indifferent, none better." 
 
 The name of the author destroys the 
 argument of this citation. This poet 
 lived in a most licentious age, when a 
 refined or morally educated woman, was 
 the rare exception. In his day there was 
 little cultivation of either heart or brain. 
 
ITALY AND FRANCE. 3I 
 
 At no time could even French morals 
 compare with the Italian licentiousness 
 and corruption of that day. The people 
 were so susceptible to female charms, 
 that they were forced to examine some 
 of their " prisoners in the dark, lest jus- 
 tice should be perverted by the influence 
 of personal beauty." If France, then, 
 was outdone in profligacy of manners by 
 Italy, Petrarch's assertions, as above, will 
 seem none too strong for the provocation. 
 The truth is their morals were altogether 
 decousties. The undisciplined and igno- 
 rant population were sunk in either fan- 
 aticism or sensuality, these opposites 
 necessarily creating much social strife 
 and disorder. The fiery women of Italy 
 indulged every passing whim, knew not 
 what soul culture meant, and were strang- 
 ers to most of those home qualities that 
 women should possess, contenting them- 
 selves with mere external attractions that 
 satisfy not the demands of the heart. 
 
32 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 Warm, sunny, passionate Italia was the 
 birthplace of the most licentious forms of 
 dancing. Can we wonder that Petrarch 
 wrote in the above strain ? But the 
 state of the world to-day (at least of 
 the English-speaking portion) is very 
 different, socially and morally — no less 
 than politically — from that of the Italy 
 of the poet's time. Every succeeding 
 period since, has brought improvements 
 with it, and to-day we can enjoy the 
 pleasures of dancing, as well as many 
 others then grossly abused, in a manner 
 consistent with the most refined and 
 chaste feelings. 
 
 This book goes on to say : *' The 
 fair women you have somewhat naturally 
 mistaken for pretresses de la Vagabonde 
 Venus, are the pure daughters and spot- 
 less wives of our best citizens. Their 
 male companions or accomplices, or 
 whatever you choose to call them, are 
 the creme de la creme of all that is re- 
 
SHOCKING INTRUDERS. 33 
 
 spectable and eligible in society." 
 Heavens ! What language and asser- 
 tions ! No wonder that he should dread 
 the formidable frowns of wealth and 
 fashion at this audacious and incredible 
 impeachment. But the noble reformer 
 quails not, cheered by the hope that 
 those fair votaries of the waltz who are 
 not above reproach, will, when they read 
 this product of a high moral purpose (!) 
 and a smitten conscience, reform alto- 
 gether. And indeed few pure-minded 
 women who have read his book, can now 
 share in this dance without a blush ? 
 Thoughts and emotions utterly strange 
 to them must rise up to embarrass and 
 restrain them. What was hitherto an 
 innocent diversion, tends to become for 
 a time at least, a painful ordeal and will 
 remain so until this book is (as I trust 
 it soon shall be) forgotten. If emotions, 
 such as the author ascribes to the waltz, 
 were at all awakened, it would be be- 
 
 
 
34 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 tween lovers or friends at least, and not 
 between utter strangers. 
 
 The author now quotes some choice 
 morceaux from Byron's "Waltz." This 
 indecent poem might well have been 
 the root, as it has been the food, of 
 the '* Dance." The child seems every 
 way like and worthy of such a parent. 
 But as to authors and citations, how ad- 
 mirably our moralist, commencing with 
 Swinburne, chooses his own. Suum 
 cuique. For him must have been written: 
 
 " All that nature made thine own, 
 Floating in air or pent in stone, 
 Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
 And, like thy shadow, follow thee." 
 
 What author more suggestive of inde- 
 cency than Byron! — a man ready to sin 
 upon the least provocation, and whose 
 mind was ever in the whirl of turbid, 
 sensual passions. Is it astonishing that 
 he, or any of his class, misconstrue the 
 exhilaration of the Waltz? Men love 
 
WE KNOW YOU NOT. 35 
 
 darkness whose deeds are darkness; 
 therefore Byron would have "the light 
 put out." In more cases than one he 
 has shocked his readers, where the theme 
 afforded less scope for it even than the 
 Waltz. 
 
 The author addresses himself to the 
 best people of every country. How for- 
 eign to their thoughts must be his ideas ! 
 The elegant and refined of the old 
 world, at least, will charitably suppose 
 him dazed, should they ever deign to 
 give his Rabelaistic conceits a perusal. 
 But I presume they will be left to the 
 scum of humanity as their fitting food. 
 
 How can we draw a parallel between 
 the love of dancing and that of drink? 
 If there v^^x^ ^^ anything in' the former 
 as there is in the latter, would men dis- 
 continue it after marriage, as it is as- 
 serted they almost invariably do ? What 
 man leaves off drink for any length of 
 time after marriage — if the love of it had 
 
36 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 fastened on him before — however terri- 
 ble its consequences might be to himself 
 and family? Of dancers we cannot 
 say, — Celui qui a dansc^ dansera, as we do 
 of drunkards, — Celui qui a bu boira. 
 
 Pope could scarcely have had in view 
 the Waltz ''monster" when he wrote: 
 
 " But seen too oft, familiar with his face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace} — 
 
 for no familiarity could reconcile us to an 
 Apollo, transformed to a Dragon more 
 pestilential than that of the classic myth. 
 They who understand human nature 
 know how tenacious is vice of its victims, 
 and how despotically it crushes outsail 
 the protecting good in our nature. For, 
 
 *' Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 The fatal shadows that walk by us still." 
 
 To understand fully this, we have but 
 to enter the drunkard's home. No com- 
 fort within its walls! No joyous prattle 
 of children there; no fire or food, — 
 
THE WAGES OF SIN. 37 
 
 naught but gaunt famine, fear, tears, and 
 whisky; the end — madness or death. 
 
 Again, see the consequences of inordi- 
 nate thirst for gain or power, whereby 
 one becomes a petrifaction, moving no 
 longer in the image of Him who made 
 us. Here will be another almost equally 
 desolate home; gilded misery — naught 
 else. The wife of a Midas or Napoleon 
 may pace her salons decked with jewels, 
 but her arms hold no golden sheaves of 
 love ; her heart is dead, her life a blank. 
 If she have vice, what wonder that she 
 indulge it! 
 
 Take Jealousy — but need we depict 
 this fiend? Who has not seen the fierce 
 gleam of his eye, culminating most fre- 
 quently in unspeakable horrors. 
 
 And how enduring and incurable the 
 vice of gambling! An evil spirit, ever 
 urging on its victim with the glittering 
 prize that allures only to inevitable de- 
 
38 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 struction! The end of all these things 
 is death. 
 
 But who are the presiding deities at 
 the dancing fete? Those of Hades or 
 of Olympus? The Furies or the Graces? 
 Let the appearance of the ball-room, the 
 smile of pleasure on all faces, and the 
 quickening of the pulse to the joyous 
 music of the dance, answer. We return 
 to our homes, after a social feast with 
 refined and cultivated human beings, 
 refreshed and strengthened, our better 
 natures, if not more stimulated to good, 
 certainly not more stimulated to evil. 
 By joy as by sorrow the heart softens to 
 a thousand kindly offices for those less 
 fortunate than we, and the silent trusts 
 committed to us are generally, from such 
 influences, more faithfully discharged. 
 Asked once by a gentleman if I were 
 any better after waltzing, I replied with 
 some surprise that I was no worse than 
 if I had played at croquet. To vice, as 
 
THE WALTZ VS. ALCOHOL. 39 
 
 I have said, belongs death; but to the 
 genial Waltz, naught that I can see but 
 life. 
 
 How can our author reconcile purity 
 of thought with sensuality of thought ? 
 How can a woman be pure and impure 
 at the same time? Yet, this is what he 
 specifically asserts. No shadow of degre- 
 dation ever flitted over me or my friends, 
 though we have waltzed away many a 
 delightful evening, returning to our homes 
 recruited in spirits, and 
 
 Carrying in our hearts for days 
 Peace that hallows rudest ways. 
 
 After making some quite inapplicable 
 comparisons between the evils of alcohol 
 and tobacco, and those of the waltz, he 
 proceeds to tell us that it is to ''pure and 
 lovely woman " ( ! ! ) he addresses himself, 
 to dissuade her from sullying herself any 
 longer with this degrading amusement. 
 Our dance, indeed, might well deserve 
 
40 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 some of the epithets he gives it, were 
 we, in its performance, a tenth part as in- 
 extricably interblended as incongruous 
 ideas are in his. The female elite of so- 
 ciety are not exactly "prostitutes!" argues 
 this audacious writer, "though the unin- 
 itiated spectator of their orgies might well 
 imagine it;" and the soul-destroying waltz 
 is one of the choice products of those who 
 lead the world in all that is refined and 
 desirable, ''perfected by the grace with 
 which God has gifted them above the vul- 
 gar ! " Those people whom the poet 
 aptly calls the " glass of fashion and the 
 mould of form," who could give us again, 
 in their persons and demeanor, the rules, 
 if lost, of all aesthetic art — those are they 
 forsooth, who shock our feelings by their 
 libidinous poses and movements, while 
 yet, in their necessarily light and unim- 
 peding costume (charged to them like- 
 wise as a " perfect outrage"), they display 
 a ravishing grace and "poetry of motion!'' 
 
OH ! NAME IT NOT ! 4 1 
 
 What clashing stuff is all this, to be 
 sure! But what can we expect from the 
 taste of a man who writes of women, fair 
 and chaste enough, according to his de- 
 scriptions, to attract the angels, as "spit- 
 ted on the same bodkin " with their 
 ''paramours " (?) in the dance ! ! Who- 
 ever before addressed such language to 
 " lovely and pure women " as is found in 
 this book ? Good mothers will consign 
 it to the flames; husbands will hide it 
 from their wives, or thrust it into some 
 corner to be forever forgotten. In no 
 country but this, perhaps, would it have 
 been allowed to see the light of day. 
 Just think, readers, of a roud, evidently 
 blasd but not passd, announcing to the 
 world that pure-minded women listen 
 gladly in the mazes of the waltz to lan- 
 guage that elsewhere they would indig- 
 nantly resent! So, the balls that we 
 attend are orgies ! The fashionable par- 
 ties at the Palace are bacchanalian revels ! 
 
42 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 The soirdes dansantes of the upper ten, 
 are the hot-beds whence emanate these 
 orgies, — and we, nearly all of us, are 
 tainted — wife, daughter, sister — because 
 we have dared to waltz ! Aye, verily, 
 when this Daniel comes to judgment not 
 one is found spotless — no, not one. 
 
 " The social status of these people is 
 not that of the rude peasant, whose lewd 
 pranks are the result of ignorance, but 
 that of the most highly cultivated and 
 refined among us." Were the author 
 addressing these "rude and ignorant peas- 
 ants," he might have some excuse for his 
 language. The boor, we are told, could 
 not dance (though he were "to give his 
 soul " for the power) like these beings far 
 his superiors, and yet far his inferiors — if 
 animal desire and brutish passion consti- 
 tute inferiority — as the author from his 
 premises must concede. Then, better 
 the boor in his clogs, than these "high- 
 strung, patent-leathered individuals," so 
 
CONFUSION CONFOUNDED. 43 
 
 much more refined and educated; for 
 thus, and only thus, can he dance inno- 
 cently. We should have thought that 
 the animal propensities of the boor would 
 render him much more fit to create and 
 enjoy the author's "bliss" of the waltz, 
 than would their instincts so fit the true 
 lady or gentleman. But it seems we 
 mistook. Logic is logic, but to what poor 
 sophistry we have sometimes to resort to 
 maintain a crazy idea ! Who can unravel 
 for us this tangle of illogical and incon- 
 gruous fancies.'^ Can vulgarity, obscenity 
 and absurdity combined, transcend the 
 pictures given us in this ** Dance of 
 Death " ? 
 
 ^^ 
 
CHAPTER III, 
 
 Childhood's happy voices 
 Oh, bid them not be still j 
 
 While the heart rejoices 
 Let its laughter peal," 
 
 NTiciPATiNG in the third chap- 
 ter the indignation that his par- 
 adoxical slanders are calculat- 
 ed to excite, he condescends 
 " to go out of his way to answer " some 
 Sunday objections, made only to be put 
 down. As I belong to neither of the 
 classes into which he divides my sex, — 
 as I am neither an old fogy, quite unac- 
 quainted with modern dancing, nor yet, 
 (though perhaps one of the '* par-excel- 
 lence" dancers) an "ogling prude," I do 
 
PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF. 45 
 
 not think it necessary to defend the posi- 
 tions that either of these classes might, 
 or is made by him to take up, although 
 en passant I may say that many of their 
 parries to his thrusts (for all the noncha- 
 lence with which he treats them) seem to 
 me effectual enough. 
 
 Far from being indignant and pro- 
 claiming this author a "detractor, a pes- 
 simist and hater of all things that are en- 
 joyable," I sincerely pity him, and earn- 
 estly recommend him a cooling draught, 
 as also all those of his sex who find 
 themselves unable to participate in the 
 pleasures of the waltz, from a pure sense 
 of duty, or a conscientious regard for 
 their precious morals. Though as to 
 the last, they at least could never be lost 
 or injured. 
 
 It is evident that our author is or pre- 
 tends to be acquainted with some vailed 
 and subtle pleasures of the waltz which 
 he is vainly essaying to communicate to 
 
46 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 US. Now, if we don't comprehend, why- 
 insist on Hfting the veil ? Better far to 
 leave us optimists. How nice are these 
 old fogies ! How good they are to see 
 *' no liarm " in so pleasant though danger- 
 ous an amusement, to smile benignly 
 upon their wives and children, as these 
 enter with all their hearts into the spirit 
 of the dance ! -What a contrast to the 
 opposite type, who make a mountain out 
 of a mole-hill, and who hurl judgment 
 upon the many for the sins of the few ! 
 Why not leave these fogies in their serene 
 innocence ? Stimulated by the authors 
 suggestions, they may take a notion to 
 enter once more the arena of the whirl, 
 crowd us, the divine dancers, out, and 
 mar the rites of the Graces with antics 
 suitable only to Pan or Priapus. In an- 
 cient Greece this author would surely 
 have been mobbed, perhaps torn assun- 
 der for his outrage upon the taste and 
 feelings of the young. 
 
THE DEVIL EVERYWHERE. 47 
 
 As to the ''blusking[}) rakes and ogling 
 prudes," if they were guilty of any im- 
 proprieties outside his imagination, why 
 should the " divine waltzers " be con- 
 demned ? It would be strange indeed 
 if the devil, who is often found in meek- 
 est guise moving among the goody — 
 goodies of every class, could be wholly 
 excluded from the ball-room. Get him, 
 O reformer, from beneath, or better still, 
 out of the pulpits, before you let loose 
 any more vials of wrath upon our una- 
 voidable short skirts, ''our wonderful 
 drapery," and our perfect " concord of 
 movement," (just what it should be) in 
 the immortal and universal worship of 
 the muse, of the " many twinkling feet.'' 
 
 I see all the eulogistic notices append- 
 ed to the volume (with three exceptions 
 to which I shall refer hereafter) are signed 
 by gentlemen. Perhaps tkey understand 
 the secret of the waltz ; if so, it is . not 
 wonderful that they endorse Mr. Her- 
 
48 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 man's views. But it is significant what 
 few women give him an encouraging word. 
 Many of them doubtless, in their sheer 
 simplicity, are still wondering what all 
 the excitement is about. The poor things 
 are incapable of grasping at once the 
 profound idea. 
 
 Plato indeed was quite right ; for how- 
 ever Utopian may be in some respects 
 the radicalism of his Commonwealth, he 
 was not such a fool as to hint even at 
 the destruction of the dance, knowing 
 well that such an attempt would be as 
 chimerical as one to stop the beating of 
 their hearts in young folks, who, by divine 
 appointment, will mingle with each other, 
 will see and be seen. 
 
 The author seems to have skimmed 
 through enough of classical lore to know 
 (what it suited him to conceal) that Plato 
 was not providing against any inevitable 
 evil, in advocating total nudity for dan- 
 cers. By no means ; but he thought that 
 
PLATO VS. HERMAN. 49 
 
 this delightful, healthful and necessary 
 recreation for the young, should have no 
 more restrictions than the competitive 
 games of the palestra, where youths and 
 maidens contended with each other with- 
 out covering. Besides as a philosopher, 
 he, like Lycurgus, knew that concealment 
 tends to create morbid and unnaturally 
 intensified desires, and that full physical 
 vigor is attainable only through exer- 
 cise and chastity in the young. But Mr. 
 H. launches with safety into Platonic 
 waters, assured that the majority of his 
 readers will swim them only under /it's 
 guidance. 
 
 Speaking for my sex of every condi- 
 tion, I affirm that, if there be any well- 
 kept secret about the waltz, it must be in 
 the custody of the men, else it would have 
 leaked out long ago, if the character for 
 babbling, assigned us by the lords of cre- 
 ation, be just. Can any one imagine that 
 it is we who would turn off the gas ? Let 
 
50 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 the men try it once, and they will have 
 from us so fierce a rebuke, that they will 
 never again undertake to gauge our 
 wishes by theirs. 
 
 According to our author the obsceni- 
 ties of Phallic worship are modernized 
 in the ''divine . waltz." Yes, Mr. H., 
 that is just it, and we should like to 
 know from you what is to be done 
 about it ? The Pagan worship of ani- 
 mal love is modernized, that is refined, 
 not by the " grotesque abominations " of 
 old times, but by the thousand and one 
 devices of cultured humanity to create 
 what Selkirk sighed for on his desolate 
 island in the words of the poet: 
 
 Society, friendship and love, 
 
 Divinely bestowed upon man, 
 Oh ! had I the wings of a dove, 
 
 How soon would I taste you again ! 
 
 I am not sorry that our author dis- 
 creetly abstained here from classifying 
 the dancers of our sex, as he did those 
 of his own. No doubt, had he done so, 
 
THE MAGNIFICENT ANIMAL. 5 1 
 
 we would have received as much or less 
 justice than the latter. It is scarcely my 
 province to take up weapons in their 
 defense; all I shall say is, that if I 
 thought I could not obtain a male part- 
 ner for any dance other than "a magnifi- 
 cent lustful animal " or a '* feeble-kneed 
 satyr of dalliance," both brainless, I 
 should flee from the ball-room as from a 
 pest-house, and I think most of my sis- 
 ters would do likewise. 
 
 The ruthless hunters of whom he 
 speaks are to be found everywhere, even 
 worming themselves into the good graces 
 of parents, etc., in the private sanctuary 
 of home, and seeking their game in the 
 public streets as in the crowded ball-roopi. 
 The "fine animal " of the author is never, 
 as judged by his standard, any better 
 than a fine animal, when taken at his 
 best. No wonder we have to be on oun 
 guard against them all, though strange 
 that it is one of them who now peaches 
 
52 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 upon his fellows and tears away the veil 
 for the eyes of womankind. He should 
 have remembered that such an exposd 
 would increase the difficulties of the 
 hunt, however aided by the conventional 
 liberties of his ball-room commonages. 
 
 But what are you men all about? 
 Will you all remain listless under these 
 terrific accusations? Is it that you think 
 them beneath your notice, or do you 
 choose to leave the burden of a reply to 
 us? Must we for once reverse the order 
 of things, and be your champion ? For 
 shame upon you all! I, for one, shall 
 never think as well of you as before, if 
 some of you be not soon "up and at" this 
 monster. 
 
 The language towards the close of his 
 third chapter may suit orgies enacted I 
 know not where, under the cover of 
 ' night, and I can only wonder how he 
 dared to use it. It is indescribable, ex- 
 cept by terms as'disgusting as his. But 
 
WALTZ WE WILL. 
 
 53 
 
 what is remarkable, it is "an indecent 
 assault upon common sense," even more 
 than upon society and its festivities. 
 
 Waltz we will! . And every woman 
 that possesses a remnant of spirit and 
 courage will now waltz more than ever 
 en depit of this " Dance;" so that its author 
 may just as well 
 
 '* hold his idle wrath, 
 
 While the waltz silvers o'er his gloomy path." 
 
 niriVBRSITT] 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 En " Cceco carpimur igni " ! 
 
 Virgil (slightly altered.) 
 
 o write in fitting terms of this 
 fourth chapter, of its audacious 
 and libidinous coloring, and of 
 its still more audacious and false 
 assertions regarding our sex, — against 
 whom the magician now waves his 
 beast- transforming wand, — might tempt 
 any one, in a reply, to violate the canons 
 of good taste. I shall not, however, do 
 so, even though my cheeks burn while I 
 write for my readers the question he now 
 states for discussion, viz: Is woman the 
 conscious or unconscious sharer of her 
 partners impure thoughts in the Waltz? 
 
A DARK PROBLEM. 55 
 
 This is the substance, the letter I cannot 
 give. The subject, you see, my sisters ^ 
 shifts, without growing any better, from 
 the motions of our bodies to those of our 
 minds. See what second-sight and mo- 
 rality, combined, can do! But tremble! 
 for all our secrets are out. A metaphy- 
 sician, whose acumen even Maimonides 
 might envy, has dissected our very souls. 
 Unhappy that we are! The solution of 
 this profound problem is all against us; 
 we are found guilty, and can only admire 
 the acute reasoning by which the discovery 
 was made. It hinges upon an assertion; 
 and what is the assertion? — Risum ten- 
 eatis amici? — Only that any woman, who 
 does not " dance divinely," that is wan- 
 tonly, is accounted a " scrub " by the 
 *' male experts;" and that to d9 so, she 
 must reciprocate the feelings of her part- 
 ner. Could Aristotle himself put up a 
 sylogistic circle more perplexing than 
 this ? The divine impulse, observe, that 
 
56 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 transforms us into full-blown and desir- 
 able " experts " comes from the man ! 
 What modesty and self-depreciation, to 
 be sure ! Was ever before such insolence 
 put on paper ? Unless we are ''experts," 
 we shall not be asked by the accomp- 
 lished roues to dance the " after-supper 
 Glide ! !" What a dreadful penalty! What 
 a convincing proof that the deep dam- 
 nation of consciousness is in our souls ! 
 But the Rev. W. C. Wilkinson, who 
 wrote a pamphlet, T/ie Dance of Modern 
 Society, believes the same thing, ergo, 
 etc ; the latter s opinion being based on 
 the stray conversation of two prigs in a rail- 
 way car, who would not give a straw to 
 
 dance with Mrs. , because " you 
 
 can't excite any more passion in her than 
 you can in a stick of wood." There are 
 many men, no doubt, who do not care to 
 make the acquaintance of any woman 
 who would be likely to keep their be- 
 havior within the strict bounds of pro- 
 priety. 
 
THE TWIN ''DANCES. 57 
 
 We all know about what young men of 
 the *'fine animal" stamp would speak after 
 a soiree. One does not gather grapes from 
 brambles, or figs from thistles. Besides, 
 the opinions of Christian clergymen £>n 
 the practical affairs of life, are often 
 vitiated by the gloominess of their re- 
 ligion. They may be, and generally are 
 very estimable men, but they prefer 
 to find their philosophy by " setting 
 their feet on graves," instead of " hear- 
 mg what wine and roses say." Tke 
 Dance of Modern Society and The Dance 
 of Death seem twins, as far as popgun 
 logic is concerned, if the extract given 
 be a fair sample. I presume they might 
 as well waltz off together. 
 
 The author introduces a friend — let 
 the /^<?«/ ** London correspondent" note 
 that he is not merely an acquaintance — 
 in this chapter ; but such a friend ! One 
 who has gained a knowledge of the waltz 
 from cellar-girls, and has practiced with 
 
58 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 them tricks which he dares to repeat 
 upon respectable zvomen I What weight 
 can the mere assertions of a man of this 
 character have ? It is my firm belief 
 that no one needs any further initiation 
 into the mysteries of "handhng," as Httle 
 as does our author ; and he can sustain 
 but Httle loss, should his friend break his 
 promise ''to show him round" through 
 the dens. But it was most needless to 
 tell us that he was ready to go, if he 
 kept it. The led might be the leader. 
 
 On pages 59 and 60, we have some- 
 thing that equals anything in the 
 book for absurdity and obscenity. A 
 great favorite of the ball-room is repre- 
 sented as dancing with a young and 
 beautiful lady in a manner to cause her 
 to fall almost to the ground from excite- 
 ment; and, upon being questioned how 
 he managed this, to declare that he 
 learned and practiced the method of 
 ** handling " in the aforesaid " dance- 
 
BLACK IS WHITE. 59 
 
 cellars," among the girls there who were 
 " posted and " — the rest is unquotable. 
 We then get the ludicrous statement that 
 his partner had not a single stain upon 
 her reputation, but she took great inter- 
 est in Sunday-schools, etc., and was the 
 greatest catch in the matrimonial market; 
 winding up the chapter with an expres- 
 sion in reference to her, that in any 
 country (California, I hope, not, ex- 
 cluded) should forever consign him to the 
 social death of the leper. The contempt 
 with which young women are spoken of, 
 as being, with "judicious handling," the 
 most " plastic material " in the hands of 
 the roue, though flowing apparently from 
 an "exact report," is evidently the author's 
 own as well — the hoof that would tread 
 us down being too manifest everywhere 
 in the glibness of the slang. 
 
 The responsibility of the statements 
 and positions taken, is sought to be evaded 
 with some subtlety of literary art. The 
 
6o THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 language is, indeed, vivid and vascular 
 enough to bleed, could we cut it; yet it 
 would yield us naught but the red blood 
 of human passion, and not a drop of the 
 pale ichor of the celestial censor, who, 
 writhing under a sense of duty, makes 
 himself a martyr for our good ! 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Lives there a woman with soul so dead ? 
 Who ever to strange man hath said, 
 Read thou my soul for public aid ! 
 
 Where lives the man who hath not spied 
 How slander does to lying glide, 
 And lying to detection ? 
 
 J, H. Carey. 
 
 HE answer to the contents of 
 the fifth chapter of the "Dance 
 of Death" is simply given in 
 the above not very<:lassical, but 
 true, parody; which means to say, that 
 the said chapter is a fabrication from 
 first to last. This assertion may aston- 
 ish some of the credulous of the other 
 sex, who have aired their morality in 
 the eulogistic notices appended to the 
 
62 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 *' Dance." What a broad grin at their 
 expense these persons could see be- 
 neath the author's sleeve, if they could 
 get a peep. Few of my sex believe 
 this fabrication, I am certain. How can 
 people be so blind as not to detect the 
 horrors lurking beneath the glittering 
 moral v^i\ of this gvmnmg prophet, whose 
 book, nolens volens, must operate like a 
 pestilence? After reiterating the foul 
 slander of the preceding chapter against 
 us, the women, in particular, and telling 
 his readers to watch, as a proof of his 
 conclusions, the ''contortions'' of body 
 and limb that the perfectly graceful 
 dancers exhibit ''at their sport," Mr. H. 
 announces that he obtained, on applica- 
 tion, from one of the ''most eminent and 
 renowned women of America," her opin- 
 ion on this bugbear of the Waltz. 
 
 Now, gentle and ungentle perusers of 
 the " Dance," is there one of you who can 
 swallow the enormity of a great, eminent 
 
CREDAT JUDiEUS APELLA. 63 
 
 and refined woman not only making con- 
 fessions to an utter stranger that put to 
 the blush even those of Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau, but "generously offering him 
 the use of her name" to substantiate 
 them! Of course, he thankfully availed 
 himself of the privilege? Not a bit of it. 
 His greater generosity to his self-sacri- 
 ficing correspondent would not permit 
 this. He had to protect from "the fiery 
 ordeal of criticism" a lady who was her- 
 self perfectly indifferent to its effect ! 
 He did not think, perhaps, at the time, of 
 the "fiery ordeal" to which the absence of 
 her name would subject his book. We 
 are thirsting, like Mrs. Sherman, to know 
 the name of the woman, "renowned and 
 refined," who "wears her heart upon her 
 sleeve for daws to peck at." This ideal 
 woman ^confesses with pale shame that it 
 Avas "the physical emotions engendered 
 by the magnetic contact of strong men," 
 of which she was enamored, not of the 
 
64 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 Waltz, nor even of the dancers; that she 
 thus "became abnormally developed in 
 her lowest nature"; winding up four 
 pages or so of like repulsive rubbish tall 
 in the author s style) by thanking God 
 that she is ''married now, with home and 
 children" around her, and so can, with 
 safety, 
 
 " Think of the passion thar shook her youth, 
 Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, 
 And be thankful now for the certain truth 
 That only the sweet remains." 
 
 Now, after this ''round" rejoinder to 
 the experiences of a "sweet girl gradu- 
 ate," we trust that when the author gives 
 again free rein to his imagination (from 
 which Heaven defend us!) he will show 
 a little respect for the common sense of 
 the community, and not let "everything 
 go loose." 
 
 If we be not greatly mistaken, the 
 letter, in the extracts, from "a lady well 
 known in social and literary circles in 
 
EXPERIMENTING EXTRAORDINARY. 65 
 
 San Francisco," belongs to the same 
 category as that we have just criticised. 
 My opinion is — again from the internal 
 evidence — that it is another pious fraud, 
 another evil done that good may come. 
 But the statement, in the ''Letters and 
 Extracts," that the lady principal of one 
 of ''the chief female seminaries on the 
 Pacific slope" has begun to read this 
 "Dance of Death," "chapter and verse" 
 — a new Bible — to her class, proves, at 
 all events, if true, how justifiable is the 
 the author's mountain-moving faith in 
 American credulity. 
 
 What a psychological study, though a 
 painful one, it would be, to watch the 
 various effects of the operation as mir- 
 rored in the faces of the young critics! 
 What tittering, blushing and amazement 
 we should see, as the eccentric reader 
 proceeded! And what debates after- 
 wards, under academic trees, on the 
 grave and important question whether 
 
66 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 the author of the ''Dance" really mea7it 
 it or not; whether he be a saint, a sin- 
 ner, or merely a quiz ! Can such an acad- 
 emy, unlike the myths in every chap- 
 ter, have a local existence and a name ? 
 We are inclined to think it may, since we 
 get five or six lines of nauseating namby- 
 pambyism in the shape of a letter from 
 one Di-o Lewis (he might as well die if 
 he wrote it), advising the "dear madam" 
 (the lady principal of the school) to read 
 that volume to her young ladies, as it 
 would ''do great good " !!! Were I any- 
 where but in America, I should un- 
 doubtedly treat the whole narrative as a 
 satirical hoax. 
 
 Whatever are we coming to ? Several 
 societies for the protection of animals, of 
 mosquitos even, but none for those who 
 are to be the mothers of the coming race! 
 The city has lately been quite exercised 
 to hold in check the evils, material and 
 moral, surging from the heads of the 
 
swallTows the camel. 67 
 
 hydra, hoodlumism, that curse of our new 
 State, — while it not only placidly permits, 
 but approves through pulpit and press, 
 of an evil compared to which the other, 
 in all its forms, is a blessing. For 
 shame, Americans ! Vindicate your- 
 selves and your well-deserved character 
 for chivalry and fair dealing towards us, 
 by execrating this ''Dance of Death." 
 Whatever may be the Waltz, the book 
 is certainly death to all the interests 
 you should protect. And those who are 
 scattering it through this community, 
 should be at once restrained and pun- 
 ished, as far as our present laws permit. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 '*Men who can boast of deeds so foul, and in vice excel, 
 Are not of woman born, but spawned, of Hell.'''' 
 
 HAT the author's conclusions 
 respecting the waltz, may not 
 be thought to apply to any 
 period of life, I must state that 
 my girlhood reminiscenses of dancing 
 in general are of the most pleasing 
 character. I see them now, like specks, 
 in the receding horizon of my youth, — 
 specks, shining indeed with the dewy 
 tints of life's morning, but casting no 
 shadow. For in those days there were 
 no perplexing prohibitions from a " Dance 
 of Death" regarding any j^articular variety 
 in the charming garden of the hop. We 
 
EVE AND THE SERPENT. 69 
 
 culled from every tree with all the zest 
 of innoceflce and youth. We took no 
 harm, strange to say, till this friendly (?) 
 serpent opened our eyes by his new 
 Apocalypse, to the knowledge of the tree 
 of — not mixed but — pure evil. Alas ! if 
 we were not goddesses before, we cannot 
 say that his book has made or will make 
 us so. It would now seem more neces- 
 sary than before to keep from the ball- 
 room, young girls under eighteen, who 
 may not have acquired tone and self- 
 control to defend themselves against any 
 impure language of "pressing and squeez- 
 ing" that may be addressed to them by 
 elegant experimenters and novices in the 
 new theory of the " Dance." When 
 older, they may treat* the hand-squeezers 
 at least — if not ^oo fierce — somewhat in 
 the style Carlyle did the Scotch peasant 
 who travelled a long way just to see the 
 world-renowned sage : " Tak a gude look, 
 my maun," said the old cynic, **tak a 
 
70 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 gude look ; it will do me no harm and 
 you no gude." 
 
 We shall have henceforth to interpret 
 on a new plane the monitory tales of our 
 childhood about Blue Beard, Red Riding- 
 hood, and the nursery ditty of the spider 
 and the fly. We prefer to remain the 
 " veriest gawk '' of the ball-room rather 
 than be initiated by any of Mr. H's en- 
 thusiastic friends into the mysteries of 
 Erebus. 
 
 Let him not imagine either that we 
 can be deceived by the magnificent gey- 
 sers of indignation in our behalf, which, 
 at suitable intervals, he spouts up. Too 
 transparent altogether for us, however 
 they may mollify or deceive some of our 
 public sentinels of the pulpit and the 
 press. . 
 
 The sixth chapter of this " Dance " is 
 texted with a quotation from an old 
 French writer against the absurdity of 
 some execrable style of dancing adopted 
 
COMPARISONS MOST ODIOUS. 7 1 
 
 in his day by women of the lowest class, 
 and has of course nothing really to do 
 with the subject in hand. The transla- 
 tion of a single line will show my readers 
 this: "Of what use are all those leaps 
 (saults) which these wenches {ces filles) 
 make, sustained under the arms by their 
 partners so that they can leap higher ?" 
 In the first place, we do not make use of 
 saults, — that is of jumps, bounds, in our 
 waltz ; the latter is a quiet, respectable 
 turning without any exposure or impro- 
 priety whatever. In the second place 
 the words, ces filles, show the class of 
 which he writes. These filles are the 
 dancers in the low saloons where revels 
 are kept up all night, increasing in excite- 
 ment to the close. So all- this display of 
 antique lore is quite out of place, in the 
 simple region of logic and application. 
 Writers like Vives do not point to us. 
 
 Reiterating his ''practical experience 
 and positive knowledge " of the abomina- 
 
72 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 tlons of the waltz (which to him we must 
 presume are real), the author goes on to 
 say that he is proud that the placard an- 
 nouncing a *' Sunday school festival, danc- 
 ing to commence at nine o'clock/' (he 
 leaves out the a. m.) "does not reflect 
 the sentiments of the entij^e community." 
 Of course not ! Because a few hundred 
 bigots, ever rolling their eyes to heaven 
 in pious horror at what they construe a 
 desecration of the Sabbath, and who, if 
 they could, would stop the birds from 
 singing on a Sunday, — must be counted 
 out! But just see what percentage of 
 the moral, conservative, orderly, and yet 
 picnic-and-dance-loving Germans will be 
 found to vote with our author. Neither is 
 it in '' the marts of business and avenues 
 of trade" — spheres always fatal to Utopian 
 theories and rabid fanaticism — that he 
 would find advocates for the discontinu- 
 ance of dancing. Not at all. These 
 classes have none of the morbid fancies 
 
GREECE AGAINST FRANKFORT. 73 
 
 entertained by reformed, soured, or con- 
 firmed " rakes." 
 
 The Frankfort authorities, we are next 
 told, decided, in the interest of good 
 morals, that children who had not been 
 confirmed (under thirteen I suppose) 
 were not to be taught dancing, and that 
 it was forbidden in the hotels, etc. 
 
 Well, what of this ? Does he think 
 that if there were any argument in this 
 we could not find plenty of offsets ? Is 
 not Aristotle at least as good a moral- 
 ist as the Frankfort people, and he ranks 
 dancing with poetry, one of the most re- 
 fining arts ? And did not the strict and 
 chaste Spartans oblige parents to exer- 
 cise their children in dancing from the 
 age of five years. But the book. is full 
 of flimsy paper-balls like this. 
 
 Page 78 of the " Dance " is simply 
 hideous. The gist of it is this, that 
 those ladies who remain insensible to 
 what this author calls "palming work," 
 
74 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 or, In other words, those whose native 
 purity of mind protects them from the 
 assaults of the " fine animals," are not fit 
 for marriage, and could not secure a hus- 
 band's affections ; while, on the other 
 hand, those who are sensible will be used 
 up before they " reach the altar !" And 
 all this raving of a diseased brain ad- 
 dressed as an advice to us In an inso- 
 lently familiar and patronizing manner, 
 calling the ** intoxication " of impure 
 thoughts " true bliss //" 
 
 I only wish that the objection made by 
 the fair dancer to his conclusions, viz : 
 that no lady will allow herself to be In- 
 troduced to, or accept as a partner In the 
 dance, anyone not a gentleman, were gen- 
 erally true In fact as well as in theory. 
 It is much less so unfortunately In this 
 the New World than in the Old. But, in 
 reply to his rejoinder, that an outward 
 gentleman may be only a " desperate 
 rou6 at heart," I have only to say that 
 
HERMAN S RIBBON-DEVICE, 75 
 
 any lady will find out that fact long be- 
 fore she can take the least harm from 
 his conduct, and will act accordingly. 
 
 As to the selection of partners, where 
 it is seldom or never the woman's privi- 
 lege to ask, it ought always to be hers to 
 refuse, especially in large and mixed 
 assemblies, and the sooner that ingenious 
 device of the ribbon (a foreign importation, 
 known to few but the Herman family, per- 
 haps) is sent back to its mother country 
 the better. If ever- there be a necessity 
 for a directory of obscene literature and 
 customs, the author undoubtedly should 
 be both editor and publisher. He has 
 '* worked up to it," as Walpole said of 
 the Premiership, and "should have the 
 place." 
 
 In his whirl of paradox and contor- 
 tion, piling Pelion upon Ossa, to frighten 
 us from the happy hunting-grounds of 
 the "fine animals," this author seems, 
 like his lady of the waltz, to "lose his 
 
76 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 senses entirely." It is we, indeed, who 
 should exclaim, " Speramus 7neliora ; one 
 of the best of those better things being 
 the removal from our society, and from 
 all avenues to it, of the ''ghastly moral 
 lepers" (if any can be found besides the 
 author) which he asserts it contains. 
 Some solitary rock might be set apart for 
 them on the glacial coast of Alaska ; for 
 the climate of the Sandwich Islands 
 would be evidently quite unsuited to 
 their disease. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Let the doors be shut upon him, 
 That he may play the fool 
 Nowhere but in his own house. 
 
 -Shakespeare. 
 
 ow many of his sex, I wonder, 
 would the author find to assent 
 to the answer he makes to his 
 lady friend's question at the 
 opening of the seventh chapter of the 
 ** Dance." '' How is it that so many of 
 you gentlemen are fond of dancing till 
 you are married, and then few of you can 
 be induced to dance any more ? " The 
 answer to this profound problem being 
 none of my business, I ought, perhaps, 
 to let the men fight over it ; still the one 
 
78 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 given by Mr, H. is so supremely ridicu- 
 lous, viz : — " the privileges of matrimony 
 relieve the 7iecessity for the dance "/ that 
 I am induced for once, to battle for them. 
 
 Young married men may be divided 
 into two classes; those who are in busi- 
 ness and those who are out ; those who 
 have much worldly care and responsibil- 
 ity, and those who have but little. The 
 latter are of course in the minority — in 
 many places in a large minority. And 
 as to these I should be tempted to reply 
 to this question, pretty much as the phil- 
 osopher at King Charles' court did to one 
 equally silly. 
 
 The king, wishing to have some sport 
 with the wise-acres of his courtiers, asked 
 if any of them could explain how it was 
 that a fish-bowl with water, weighed as 
 much without the fish as with them. The 
 explanations were all highly scientific, 
 but equally unsatisfactory, till the laugh- 
 ing king turned to a silent philosopher, 
 
FIREWORKS MOST HARMLESS. 79 
 
 and asked his opinion. His reply was : 
 "Is your majesty's statement a fact } 
 Please let me see the bowl in the scales." 
 And so I think on investigation it will 
 be found that young married men of the 
 second class do not discontinue dancing. 
 And as to the first class, I presume they 
 would all tell the author that the cares of 
 married life, and the endeavor to meet by 
 greater gains the heavy expense -that our 
 extravagance, but too often, in dress and 
 wants entails, leave them in a frame of 
 mind and body very unsuitable for the 
 ball-room. 
 
 The author now manufactures out of 
 a novel called " Gunnar," three and a 
 half pages of most harmless though not 
 innocent fireworks, which he hopes the 
 public will take for solid shot against this 
 Satanic fortress, the Waltz. Ragnhild, 
 we are told, was to wed Lars, *' under the 
 pressure of parental authority ; " but she 
 loved Gunnar, and preferred, as would 
 
 >^ Ot THB ^<^^ 
 
8o THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 any true hearted woman, to dance with 
 him, forgetting in so doing, everything 
 besides. And because afterwards a knife 
 gleamed in the hands of Lars, stung with 
 natural jealousy — and because Miss R. 
 ran off finally with her lover, leaving a 
 detested suitor out in the cold, the whirl 
 of the dance was to bla^ne I Not a word, 
 *' even remotely," about the folly and sin 
 of intriguing parents forcing their chil- 
 dren into hated marriages — a cause of 
 misery and crime the most fruitful, and 
 one which our author might have well 
 selected upon which to blunt his lance, 
 instead of running his Quixotic tilt 
 against the waltz. And all this inference, 
 even if well drawn, not from a fact, but a 
 fiction ! Were illustrations from real life, 
 that " blood is upon the skirts " of Terp- 
 sichore, so lacking that he had to fall back 
 upon romance ? And could " any man 
 possessing a grain of common sense," 
 think that Lars drew the knife because he 
 
THAT HUSBAND OF MINE. 8 1 
 
 "plainly understood the nature of the 
 performance in which his intended had 
 been engaged ? " For what does the 
 author take his readers ? 
 
 Lead us not into hallucination, 
 
 But deliver us from sophistry, O Lord. 
 
 Who can blame the "semi-respecta- 
 ble " woman for wishing to escape in the 
 ball-room, the ennui of a grumbling, un- 
 amiable husband, in the pigeon holes of 
 whose dull cranium there is naught but 
 jealousy ? Of course ** she takes him 
 along," thus escaping the misery of her 
 own thoughts, and of his — if he has any. 
 And if the ball-room or the waltz did 
 prove the immediate cause of a divorce 
 from a husband such as the author — a 
 divorce that any Court in the land would 
 grant her — she may well count either a 
 blessing as well as a pleasure. 
 
 As to the other totally untrammeled 
 goddess, whose perfections, for some in- 
 scrutable reason our author cannot des- 
 
82 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 cribe, she seems to belong to that branch 
 of the free-love school which is not strong 
 minded, but frivolous. Suppose the 
 dance did not exist in any form, would 
 there be less of those women, who find 
 it much more pleasant " to cleave to all 
 others " and let the husband alone ? 
 
 As a rule it will be found, I think, 
 that a man who could choose such a wife 
 ought to be left alone. The dance never 
 spoils a good woman, never weans her 
 from husband and home, though it may 
 sometimes afford an outlet for the follies 
 of a bad one. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 lUic Priapum pone, 
 Hippolitum nunquam erit. 
 
 —J. H. Carey. 
 
 N the last chapters of this book 
 under review we have scarcely 
 any thing but a repetition, more 
 emphasized if possible, of the 
 falsehoods and absurdities in the preced- 
 ing ones. The author would fortify him- 
 self with authorities, ancient if not mod- 
 ern, against the dance. And here let 
 me observe that, although he set out by 
 cautioning us, even in a foot-note, not to 
 " wilfully construe " his " dancers " in 
 any other sense than waltzers — and con- 
 sequently dance in the sense of waltz — 
 
84 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 he himself wilfully quotes and ilhistrates 
 from mkny old writers, who speak in gen- 
 eral against all dancing, and not merely 
 against the waltz, which, as he says, did 
 not exist in their day. Either he ap- 
 proves of dancing or he does not. If 
 he does, why cite opinions that refer to 
 any and all dancing ? Are they given 
 by way of an a fortiori argument against 
 the waltz ? And if he does not, why is 
 he afraid to say so ? Why lead people 
 ab initio to suppose, by the caution re- 
 ferred to, that he does not disapprove 
 of dancing, but merely of ''the round 
 dances," 
 
 Is it on the Napoleonic principle of 
 concentrating his force upon a key-posi- 
 tion of the enemy's before making a 
 general assault ? Does he wait to see 
 what may be the result of the special 
 effort before inflicting a grand cannon- 
 ade with the same mephitic powder ? As 
 far as authority is concerned, his cause 
 
CAP FITS NOT. 85 
 
 must be a weak one indeed when he has 
 to draw for support upon the Church of 
 Geneva, three centuries ago, and upon a 
 certain worthy St. Aldegonde of 1577, 
 to whom no doubt 
 
 " Hio haircloth und his bloody whips *' 
 
 were far better known and more agree- 
 able than 
 
 "Shining eyes and smiling lips." 
 
 And as to any weighty modern au- 
 thorities against dancing, I see none 
 in the text of this book, except that of 
 Gail Hamilton, whose words (if not an- 
 other fabrication), evidently refer to some 
 vulgarities of quite recent introduction, 
 in which, as I said before, no lady would 
 indulge. What ''pose of the parties " 
 in the true German dance " suggests im- 
 purity," we should like to know ? And 
 so, by giving a general application to 
 half-quoted passages on special subjects, 
 he hopes to impose authority upon us. 
 
86 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 In the very next paragraph he lets out 
 that he refers to something altogether 
 new : "two forward and two backward 
 movements, then sideways with a whirl," 
 has nothing at all to do with the waltz 
 proper, and Mr. H., with his " charming 
 young lady just arrived from abroad," 
 can have of all such fandangoes, as far 
 as we ladies are concerned, a perpetual 
 royalty. 
 
 But indeed nearly every paragraph in 
 these last chapters, contains either some 
 false assertion or some squibby and 
 far-fetched analogy against dancing in 
 general. '* The young people of the 
 North," according to Claus Magnus 
 *' dance among naked sword - blades 
 scattered on the ground," in which^ 
 using the author's exegetical specs, we 
 can see the '' far deadlier dangers " to 
 which our young are exposed ! Follow- 
 ing this cue, a city paper, a few days 
 ago, after telling us that two little girls 
 
HERMAN IN A NEW ROLE. 87 
 
 waltzed off the roof of a house in New 
 York to the pavement below, a distance 
 of five and a half stories, and that one 
 was killed, moralizes : *' This is not the 
 first little girl who has waltzed herself 
 into eternity " — Specimen bud of the 
 first-fruits of the " Dance." 
 
 Again, on page loi we read : " One 
 of our ablest writers says it is a war on 
 home, on physical health," etc. Why 
 does not the author tell us who this able 
 writer is ? We grow more and more sus- 
 picious of those anonymous authorities, 
 his imagination being evidently so fervid 
 and even creative. And what is " it ''? 
 We must take the writer's subject on trust 
 also from the author's application. All 
 very satisfactory to him, no doubt ! 
 
 On page io6, Mr. Herman himself, 
 this time playing physiologist, tells us 
 that woman is the greater sufferer, phys- 
 ically, from the baneful effects of the waltz; 
 as what is only " hurtful indulgence " for 
 
88 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 a man is fatal excess for a woman ! But 
 where did he learn this ? He would find 
 eminent medical authority adverse to him 
 on this point. And she is a greater loser 
 morally also, we are told, because she 
 loses that, without which her grace and 
 beauty are but a curse — "man's respect !" 
 It is amazing, my sisters, how much 
 arrogance and self-conceit this author, 
 stuffed with conventional ideas, can man- 
 age to throw into a paragraph. Even 
 when not united to moral worth, to 
 whom, I ask, are woman's grace and 
 beauty a curse ? To herself or to man ? 
 Let history answer. Have not these 
 •her weapons — like all given by the Su- 
 preme to his creatures for their defence 
 and support — ever proved wholly effi- 
 cient and irresistible ? What became of 
 the work of Confucius, the great moral 
 reformer, when his enemies brought from 
 Tibet eighty dancing and singing houries 
 to counteract, by their wiles and capers, 
 
POOR WOMAN ALWAYS WRONG. 89 
 
 the influence of his wholesome though 
 rather ascetic doctrines at the China 
 Court ? He was now forced to flee to 
 the wilderness. Grace and beauty were 
 masters of the field to the detriment of 
 man. It is fated that he shall ever be 
 the slave of Beauty, be she "blest or 
 unblest." 
 
 Her dangerous glances 
 
 Make women of men j 
 New-born we are melting 
 
 Into nature again. 
 
 Man s respect, indeed ! We may set 
 some little value on it, perhaps, when 
 those ''magnificent animals" themselves 
 become commonly respectable ! 
 
 In the next paragraph we are told 
 " her punishment — the ad valorem in- 
 crease, I suppose — is just, her fault be- 
 ing more inexcusable than his !" An- 
 other of the million applications of that 
 chivalrous tale by chivalrous man, of 
 Adam and the apple ! But why is this 
 so? Hear the reasoning of this casuist : 
 
90 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 Because " woman is the natural and ac- 
 knowledged custodian of morals. It is 
 she who fixes the standard of modesty — 
 she draws the lines limiting the boundary 
 of masculine approach and of feminine 
 concession." "To a certain extent," he 
 proceeds, " man may blaTnelessly (Proh 
 pudor!) accept whatever privileges she 
 is pleased to accord him ! " If I did 
 not fear to put the author's modesty to 
 the blush, I would beg of him to be a little 
 more explicit as to the '' extent T I 
 would ask him, should his sex be blamed 
 or not for "striking the iron while it was 
 hot," the iron being a woman, as he de- 
 scribes, in a state like the fused metal, 
 "with a pound of passion to a grain of 
 reason." It is useless, though, to ask 'of 
 this lord-man and his ilk such ques- 
 tions ; they believe, and always will, that 
 we were made for them ; that our rights 
 and pleasure must be always subservient 
 to theirs. 
 
EMERSON AND MILL. 9 1 
 
 Could they give no better plea for 
 striking the helpless iron, they could 
 say, "We were ' flown with insolence 
 and wine,' " and that would suffice! Un- 
 fortunately for the world and its lords, 
 the very reverse of what the author as- 
 serts as to our legislative power is true. 
 Woman fixes scarcely anything with 
 reference even to herself; man takes 
 care or, till very recently, has taken care 
 of all. Emerson, no mean authority, 
 and Mill, too, if not in letter, in tenor, 
 declare that the world will not be better 
 socially or morally till the men get sense 
 enough to allow us to show them "how 
 we would be served." 
 
 But since woman has "betrayed her 
 trust," shown her weakness (see page 
 130), through the devilish enginery of 
 "palming and pressing," used against 
 her by her protector (!) man, he is in- 
 vited to walk in and regulate matters 
 by suppressing his own inventions, or 
 
92 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 the vehicle through which they work 
 best, the Wahz. The wolf is called 
 upon to ''show his strength and re- 
 deem his honor" (!) by placing the 
 sheep in some other position more fa- 
 vorable for him. But from these poor 
 things, as I infer, all law-making power 
 should be taken! How fair and god-like 
 all this! What about the multitude of 
 maidens and matrons who have not 
 sinned, Mr. H.; — whose ''natural aver- 
 sion for impurity" would leave them 
 still eligible to serve you in the putting 
 down of this dreadful evil ? 
 
 The last sentence of this 107th page, 
 and the last page in the chapter, out- 
 herod Herod in their extravagant inso- 
 lence. He allows his horses — unre- 
 strained enough before, heaven knows — 
 now full rein; dashing, of course, his 
 Bacchic gig to pieces. Hear him: Poor 
 woman, having shamelessly violated "the 
 sacred trust that nature and society have 
 
WILL ESCAPE METEMPSYCHOSIS. 93 
 
 confided to her," the ball-room roues 
 should regard her as something lower 
 than — he would probably have said 
 themselves, had he not caught a glimpse 
 of the impossibility. 
 
 As to the last page, I dare give only 
 its substance. The ravenous wolves, the 
 ''gentlemen, who are no professors of 
 heroic virtues," (not they!) becoming 
 sated with their partners in the dance, 
 dismiss those who are not yet "on the 
 street" with the same easy courtesy they 
 do the courtesans who are! And all this 
 of women who must be (if any are) 
 wholly irreproachable! ^ 
 
 The Indian metempsychosis need have 
 no terrors for our author. If an animal 
 incarnation of his soul after death be 
 either needed or possible, the change can 
 be of little consequence to him. He 
 may indeed find it at first a little strange 
 going on fours instead of twos, but as to 
 strangeness of feeling there can be none. 
 
94 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 The spiritual habitat would be altogether 
 familiar. What he would have chiefly 
 to dread from the anger of Brahma would 
 be total extinction. Just think, readers, 
 how perfect an animal he must be ! 
 T wenty years of toil to reach the pin- 
 nacle of filth ! 
 
 The history of the '' get up " of this 
 book would, I suspect, be a curious one. 
 
 As to the title, its cause may have been 
 as fearfully real as its application has 
 been immorally fanciful. Could the joy- 
 ous Waltz have suggested it ? Ah ! more 
 likely that the imminent prospect of a 
 pas seul in the aj.r, to carry out the ** mor- 
 al purpose^of a judge, honest if implacable, 
 stamped the name vividly on the author's 
 brain. 
 
 From many passages of his put cases, 
 it seems to me the author could say of 
 some of his illustrations, " / know how it 
 is myself^' ; for, in many of them we think 
 we see festering the sting of personal 
 
HUMANO CAPITI CERVICEM, ETC. 95 
 
 slight or loss. At all events, what more 
 natural than that wife or daughter should 
 seek away from his home an atmos- 
 phere more suited to her womanly in- 
 stincts for the beautiful and good than 
 she could there breathe. I, at least, 
 could not suppose that the author of such 
 a book as the *' Dance," could fill the 
 voids in either heart or brain of a good, 
 refined, or intelligent woman. 
 
 Or, again, the foundation may have 
 been laid by a man of low tastes, habits, 
 and associations — by some habitue of 
 dives, beer-cellars, etc., and subsequently 
 the cesspool may have been a little de- 
 oderized and built upon by a careful and 
 cunning hand — by some cultured gentle- 
 man, who, having the entree to good 
 society, descended (for unknown mo- 
 tives) to pander to the original designer, 
 by caricaturing its habits — by treating as 
 deceptive apples of Sodom, fruit fair 
 enough to have grown in the gardens 
 of the Blest. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul 
 Refuse you for my judge j whom yet once more 
 I hold my most malicious foe, and think not 
 At all a friend to truth. 
 
 —Henry VIII. 
 
 N the ninth chapter we get 
 more illustrations, less pertinent 
 than ever to the author's design, 
 the destruction of the " abomi- 
 nation," the waltz. He calls it the high 
 road to the divorce court ; but I am sat- 
 isfied that could an extended and impar- 
 tial investigation be made, it would 
 reveal against one divorce a hundred 
 marriages. If it lead anywhere spe- 
 cially, it is to the hymeneal altar, as stated 
 by his lady friend 2X the beginning of the 
 
HINC ILL^ LACRIM^ ! 97 
 
 seventh chapter of the '* Dance": . . '* you 
 fall in love with us In the ball-room, 
 you court us there, and you marry us 
 there," etc. 
 
 This, we think, is rejoinder enough to 
 the divorce-thrust against the dance. 
 
 With his put cases of the '* poor, dull, 
 stupid Benedick," who, being nothing 
 more in the ball-room than oiUside it, 
 (according to the author s own putting), 
 had very naturally to content himself 
 with being a wall-flower, — and of the 
 young and newly-married man, who, 
 having taken a frivolous, good-for-noth- 
 ing woman to wife, thought to win her 
 heart by Imitating her follies, and failed 
 as he deserved, — with such cases, I say 
 my readers will not trouble themselves 
 much, bearing duly in mind his artistic 
 coloring to give vraisemblance to his fig- 
 ures. He appears, however, so sincere for 
 once In his sympathy for the poor " Bene- 
 dick," abandoned by the wife for some 
 
98 ' THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 favored one who usurps all her attention, 
 that we suspect some fellow-feeling, in 
 this instance, " has made kim wondrous 
 kind." Of both these, especially the 
 first, we may say that their own impru- 
 dence and not the waltz brought them to 
 grief Had they not inverted the plain 
 injunction of common sense, no less than 
 of the Talmud which says : '' When thou 
 choosest a friend ascend a step, but when 
 thou choosest a wife descends, step," there 
 would have been little trouble at home. 
 But perhaps it would have been impossi- 
 ble for such poor fellows to follow the 
 advice, being themselves little better 
 than the missing links for which Darwin 
 is hunting. 
 
 The filth of this book is in a great 
 measure its armor. Alive with corrup- 
 tion, places cannot be touched. Mutatis 
 7nuta7tdisy we can say of it in the words 
 of Moore : 
 
 You may file, you may polish the book as you will, 
 But the scent — not of roses — will hang 'round it stiJl. 
 
INGOBERGES SILLY EXPERIMENT. 99 
 
 As to the result of Ingoberge's silly 
 experiment beingchargeable to the dance, 
 it is too ridiculous, and I think the author 
 ought to treat his readers with a little 
 more courtesy than to suppose them fools. 
 Indeed his selected illustrations through- 
 out are most infelicitous. The idea of a 
 woman's trying, in the feudal times, to 
 win her despot lord from the attractions 
 of the chase by bringing to bear on him 
 the superior ones of " two sisters of sur- 
 passing beauty," to essay with him " the 
 light fantastic," and hoping for any other 
 result than that of divorce or decapita- 
 tion I Would the result have been diff- 
 erent had the sisters sung or played or 
 conversed or done anything else divinely ? 
 Pshaw ! let not our author presume too 
 much on the stupidity of his readers. 
 Once on page 120 the truth emerges a 
 little from the fog in which he endeavors 
 to hide her, when he says: ''The waltz 
 may not make such despicable creatures 
 
lOO THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 as I have described — (he is speaking of 
 non-dancing and non-jealous husbands, 
 who feel proud of the admiration their 
 wives attract) — but it at least affords 
 them an opportunity to parade their own 
 degradation ! ! " Well, if that's not ra- 
 tional, 'tis at least original. Why, the 
 qualities that such men possess are vir- 
 tues, not vices — traits to be envied, not 
 condemned! No doubt, in Mr. H.'s es- 
 timation, they would be far more praise- 
 worthy if they showed themselves unso- 
 cial, jealous brutes, and dragged their 
 wives in a pet from the ball-room. 
 
 The allusion to Herodias' dancing-ofif, 
 the head of John the Baptist, is of the 
 same drivling, inconsequential type as the 
 rest. Just as if her mother would not 
 have found other means, if needed, of 
 avenging the reproof she received for her 
 licentiousness. This is the way he illus- 
 trates that the waltz has ever been the 
 cause of violence and bloodshed ! And 
 
THOSE OBSCENE PHOTOGRAPHS. ID I 
 
 where he cannot point to an actual Ven- 
 detta of blood, enacted in the ball-room, 
 he will assert that it is " nevertheless de- 
 clared," and has a spiritual realization — 
 like Paul's Millenium — in " murdered 
 love and bleeding hearts " — an assertion 
 resting merely on ^^> judgment, or, rather 
 imagination. 
 
 In his tenth chapter ("pray heaven " 
 it be his last) he refers to the latest 
 variety of waltz ; but as no modest wo- 
 man would either dance it at all, or dance 
 it in a way of which she herself would be 
 ashamed, he wastes his wit about the 
 ** pleasing idimAy picture for later years " 
 that the attitude assumed while dancing 
 it would afford. But if "some maiden " 
 had favored him with such a photograph 
 of her dancing-self, he might surely have 
 risked, like a brave martyr, the wrath of 
 an offended law by using it to illustrate 
 his book, if the ''success of its 7nission 
 would be thereby assured'' Besides, if 
 
I02 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 thje majesty of the law could swallow the 
 beam of the book itself, for the sake of its 
 pure motive ( /), our author could not sup- 
 pose that the law would choke because of 
 the motes of a few obscene pictures. 
 
 In the following paragraph, however, 
 we have the astounding declaration that^ 
 had he given us such a representation it 
 ** would immediately effect the fulfillment 
 of a prophecy," that is, in other words, the 
 ''success of the book's mission.'' So that 
 the prophecy and the book's mission be- 
 ing identical (as a careful reading of the 
 two paragraphs will clearly show), to 
 know what the latter really is, or what 
 Mr. Herman wishes his book to accom- 
 plish, we have only to find out the former. 
 This the author himself condenses for us 
 from a work recently published, called 
 " Saratoga in Nineteen Hundred." "In 
 those times there is to be no more danc- 
 ing. The gentlemen are, indeed, to en- 
 gage the ladies as now, but instead of 
 
CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TRAP. IO3 
 
 taking them on the floor, they will retire 
 with their partners to little private rooms," 
 with which every respectable mansion is 
 to be provided, etc., as this will be "a 
 great improvement" upon the present too 
 public display of feeling. I cannot shock 
 my readers by giving his exact closing- 
 words. Surely, after this, it should be 
 needless to enquire any more about the 
 motive oi the "Dance;" he himself has 
 unintentionally revealed it, viz, to de- 
 moralize the world, and usher in a Satur- 
 nalia of vice. How was it, Mr. Her- 
 man, that after twenty years smoothing 
 and patching to make your pyrite look 
 like a real gem, this huge fissure, by 
 which we can see to its very core, 
 escaped your notice? How was it that 
 you could not see the inference which 
 all must draw, viz, that yowx pen-pictures 
 of the vile dance would tend to bring 
 about the new Satanic era with much 
 more rapidity than the sun-pictures .'^ Ah ! 
 
I04 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 truly, we must say with Confucius : ** How 
 can a man (or any other animal) be con- 
 cealed ! How can he be concealed !" 
 
 The chapter winds up with a descrip- 
 tion, meant to be ironical, of that future 
 generation whose religion shall be danc- 
 ing. But If we take away the sensual 
 aim and spirit of the transformation 
 (which for our author is nothing more 
 than a Mahomet's paradise \ and make 
 one or two trifling changes, we might 
 say that he wrote " better than he knew." 
 He seems to be unaware that the high- 
 est expression of religious feeling is In 
 dancing and son^. The first is to sol- 
 emn action what the second or music 
 is to grave discourse. For, when this 
 feeling passes a certain point of inten- 
 sity, It breaks naturally Into the undy- 
 ing forms of dancing and song. In 
 these, then, is found the highest wor- 
 ship—a fact that both reason and his- 
 tory show. If there be any wlldness or 
 
NO death; all life. 105 
 
 intoxication about them, it is of a very 
 different kind from that of the *' half- 
 drunk, half-mad Bacchante " of the au- 
 thors imagination. One of his gross 
 conceptions — to whom " all goodness is 
 poison to his stomach " — would not be 
 likely to understand or value the " true 
 bliss " of that high ecstasy, so I need not 
 try to lift its sacred veil. Among the 
 '' whirling congregation " of the coming 
 time that he mocks, those of his type 
 can have no place. Hymn-books and 
 prayer-books shall indeed have disap- 
 peared, as also the hand-built house, 
 where they were used; but nothing " un- 
 clean " shall frolic on the floor of the 
 new temple, where no mementos of suf- 
 fering or death shall be seen. No place 
 there for Mr. Herman's '' magnificent 
 animals," who must pursue their "de- 
 lectable recreation " elsewhere, perhaps, 
 with weeping and gnashing of teeth. 
 The " divine dancers " of that era shall 
 
I06 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 have no pollution to fear from the 
 earthly one of this. Then, as says the 
 Psalmist, the world s '* mourning shall be 
 turned into dancing, its tears and despair 
 into ''songs of joy." 
 
 But it is almost time to stop this need- 
 less refutation in detail of a phillipic like 
 the " Dance," the whole strength of which 
 lies in its burnished though audacious 
 obscenity. We need not concern our- 
 selves any longer about putting out the 
 light it has struck. An ignis fattms 
 from the foul exhalations of a sensual 
 mind, it will soon disappear in the dark- 
 ness that gave it birth ; and I should 
 not have noticed it at all, perhaps, had 
 I not feared that a universal silence on 
 our part might have been misconstrued 
 against us. ' 
 
 No doubt most of my sex thought it 
 too contemptible for an answer, or they 
 were perhaps too stunned by the author's 
 insolence to give expression to their feel- 
 
SMITE IMPUDENCE WITH SCORN. I07 
 
 ings. To them I would now say: sully 
 not your fingers by taking up this lewd 
 nightmare, the '' Dance of Death ; " but 
 if unfortunately you have already done 
 so, show that its perusal has not left a 
 ripple upon your previous repose, or even 
 a tinge of shame upon your innocence, by 
 dancing the waltz on all proper occasions 
 more than ever. Let your acts, my sis- 
 ters, be the hellebore to restore this mad- 
 man to reason, even though, like Hor- 
 ace's applauder in the empty theater, he 
 may curse you for destroying his pleas- 
 ing delusions. Drink in the spirit; of the 
 poet, who wrote just for such an occasion 
 when he said : 
 
 '•Ye generous maids, revenge your sex's wrong} 
 Let not the mean destroyer e'er approach 
 Your sacred charms, now muster all your pride, 
 Contempt and scorn, that, shot by beauty's eye, 
 Confounds the mighty im|'udent and smites 
 The front unknown to shame; trust not his vows, 
 His labored sighs and well-dissembled tears, 
 Nor swell the triumph of known perjury." 
 
 And while you thus silently but se- 
 verely rebuke the doctrine of this book. 
 
I08 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 by doing more than ever what it con- 
 demns, exercise greater care than be- 
 fore as to whom you admit to your ball- 
 rooms, and above all use despotically 
 your right to refuse whom you please as 
 partners in the dance. Show these lords 
 of creation that you and you alone are 
 the arbiters as to what and whom you 
 shall permit. 
 
 And to the men I would say, as did 
 the philosopher to his slandered and 
 complaining friend : 'Act so that no one 
 will believe the detractor.' You, who 
 understand what is our due, and whose 
 external courtesy towards us mirrors 
 your inward respect and delicacy, — you 
 can afford to smile at the "corrupting 
 influence " of the Waltz. You certainly 
 will not be deterred from dancing it 
 through any ravings of the author. Nor 
 will you be likely to frame for us more 
 restrictions than we choose to use, only 
 because Mr. H.'s lions are abroad. Let 
 
DANCE OF GOLDEN AGE. IO9 
 
 his fancies devour him, while we, " with 
 even powers," 
 
 *• The rock, the spindle and the shears control, 
 Of Destiny, and spin our own free hours." 
 
 Dancing in general, and the Waltz in 
 particular, will be, I hope, for you what it 
 must ever be for us, an amusement no less 
 innocent than delightful. Remember that 
 though there may be no actual dancing in 
 the world to come, one of the wisest poets, 
 the great Homer, has depicted (after an- 
 cient usage) its exalted joys by those he 
 deemed best and purest in this. So we 
 have in his Dance of the Golden Age a 
 high sanction for this amusement of our 
 Iron Age, as old at least as the sun. 
 
 The divine bard sings as follows : 
 
 "And here the fair-haired Graces, the wise Hours 
 Harmonia, Hebe, and sweet Venus' powers, 
 Danced 5 and each other, palm to palm did cling, 
 And with them danced not a deformed thing j — 
 No forespoke dwarf, nor downward witherling ; 
 But all with wondrous goodly forms were decked, 
 And moved with beauties of unprized aspect. 
 Dart-dear Diana, even with Phoebus bred, 
 Danced likewise there 5 he touched his lute to them 
 Sweetly and softly : a most glorious beam 
 Casting about him — as he danced and played." 
 
^a:^^ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 O heaven, that such companions thou'dst unfold ; 
 
 And put in every honest hand a whip, 
 
 To lash the rascals naked through the world." 
 
 Shakspear£. 
 
 AViNG brought this ten -act 
 Irdig^Cxy-bouffe to a close, the 
 author now thinks he ought to 
 respond in a Httle speech to the 
 epistolary plaudits of the public; the 
 hisses he will print ''at some future 
 time," he says; that is, when ''the river 
 flows by for the countryman." But we 
 strongly advise his censors not to en- 
 trust their weapons to Mr. Herman's 
 keeping, if they would oppose him 
 effectually; for all his promises, he will. 
 
HIDES THE HISSES. Ill 
 
 take good care to leave them to rust 
 and oblivion. He tells us, however, that 
 their chief objection ("for lack of a 
 better," according to him,) is that his 
 book '' is likely to do more harm than 
 good to young people, as it will teach 
 them what they were ignorant of be- 
 fore." In the foregoing pages we have 
 said the same thing, not lacking a few 
 others, to which we seriously call his 
 attention. He does not dispose of this 
 simple but effective argument against 
 his book; it rather disposes of him. 
 Still, as he manages to wTap the truth in 
 a mist of plausible sophistry, let us dis- 
 sect a little his special pleading. " If, 
 at the present day," he argues, " the 
 youth of either sex are ignorant of any- 
 thing the 'Dance of Death' can teach, it 
 is not from want of opportunity to be 
 wiser." Now let me observe that evil 
 is of two kinds, external and internal. 
 The first is always real, and independent 
 
112 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 of US, as its cause of being is outside us. 
 All external evils are, therefore, proper 
 subjects of advice or warning. Internal 
 evils may be divided into two classes: 
 those that flow inevitably from external 
 evil, — as mental derangements from ex- 
 cessive use of stimulants, — and those 
 that have no material source, but arise 
 from a wrong direction given to the in- 
 ternal motions we call thought. Now,- 
 unless the relation between any given 
 act and a specified train of thought be 
 obvious, or, from experience, undeniable, 
 nothing is so well established, practi- 
 cally, as that we should not awaken in 
 the minds of the young, by speech or 
 otherwise, a train of thought which may 
 be pernicious, — above all, in association 
 with a recreation like dancing, so old, 
 so pleasing, so deep-rooted and wide- 
 spread. 
 
 The ''beacon" itself, in this instance, 
 is far more to be dreaded, as a destroy- 
 
BEACON " THE ONLY " ROCK." I 1 3 
 
 ing agent, than the latent or imagined 
 rock from which it would fend us. I 
 say all this on the supposition that there 
 is a rock ; but if there be none, or none 
 worth speaking about, the office that the 
 "Dance" professes to perform for us be- 
 comes as unnecessary as It is dangerous. 
 All then is pure loss without compensa- 
 tion. The author claims that his book 
 is but for one class (it affects nearly all)^ 
 viz: for those who as yet ''know no 
 evil," but may drift upon ''the rocks that 
 beset their course," and so gain "a right 
 to complain bitterly of those who 
 should have furnished them with a chart." 
 Plausible, but deceptive pleading, this ! 
 We all know that vice has, in itself, fas- 
 cination enough for the young, without 
 enhancing it with artificial coloring ; — 
 and yet this is what the author has done 
 all through his book. He has written 
 of the Waltz in a manner to tempt the 
 very class for which he professes to 
 
114 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 write, the young and innocent, to taste 
 its forbidden pleasures. Forbidden fruit, 
 even with instant and severe punish- 
 ment attached, is now, as of old, the 
 sweetest for the young. Will they ab- 
 stain from eating when the penalty is 
 remote or unappreciable by them ? Does 
 Mr. H. paint the future /?ams of indulg- 
 ing in the Waltz with the tenth part of 
 the colors with which he does its imme- 
 diate pleasures? He does not, — as any 
 one can see who opens his book. So, 
 then, as this would act only as an incen- 
 tive to evil-doing, for the only class that 
 he thinks it should benefit, nothing re- 
 mains for us but to cast it into the fire. 
 It has plainly no place in this world, 
 except as an instrument for Satan, whose 
 arsenal has been long overstocked. So 
 much for the argumentative part of his 
 address to the public. 
 
 If those who keep objectionable 
 works, Mr. Herman, will not neverthe- 
 
OUTCAST FROM THE MEANEST. II5 
 
 less allow your book Into their houses, 
 lest it fall into improper hands, it may 
 be because they think it, as an in- 
 centive to vice, " raised by its merit 
 to a bad eminence " over all others. Or, 
 perhaps, possessing Rabelais, — whose 
 " filth," if " inexpressible," is at least 
 comparatively harmless, — and Petronius, 
 and Apuleius, whose " unnatural beastli- 
 ness " is not dressed up, like yours, ad 
 captandum, they may think they have 
 enough of such garbage, and so refuse 
 yours admittance. 
 
 You will not take it seriously to heart, 
 I hope, that this seeming slight has been 
 put upon your " Dance." If it was 
 refused the society of even Balzac's 
 Contes Dramatigues, with all its *' pretty 
 pictures," you ought to remember that 
 this was the best involuntary compliment 
 it could have been paid. The illustra- 
 tions of the '' Droll Stories," however 
 plain and vile, were not half as dangerous 
 
Tl6 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 as the "Dances" pen-pictures. Still, the 
 "moral purpose" of your book ought to 
 have insured it a passport to the best soci- 
 ety of its kind! No wonder that you should 
 feel a little piqued that it did not ; but 
 unfortunately, as the language and style 
 of your book by no means confirmed its 
 own assertions about its honesty and 
 good intentions, the first (as is usually 
 the case) were believed and the last were 
 not. That half a dozen bad books are 
 kept out of reach of those whom they 
 may harm, is no reason, Mr. Herman, 
 why any more should be added to the lot 
 And now, lest it be thought that 
 he stands ''entirely alone in his opin- 
 ions," he proceeds to give us favorable 
 extracts from newspaper reviews and let- 
 ters concerning the " Dance." As some 
 of these are no doubt genuine, all well 
 framed, and many of them from good 
 sources, and so calculated to mislead the 
 unwary, not acquainted with the tricks 
 
NOT MODESTY, BUT PRUDENCE. II7 
 
 usual in such cases, I shall make, a few 
 comments on them. Before doing so, I 
 would say that, though the name of the 
 responsible, if not real author, is quite 
 immaterial to the questio7t, yet as it was 
 known to many before any letters such as 
 that from Mrs. General Sherman openly 
 revealed it, I confess to being so obtuse 
 as not to understand the given grounds of 
 its y^r;;^^/ concealment, viz., for the' sake 
 of "good taste" and '' modesty T These 
 may be the true ones; though, having 
 evidently exhausted so much of these 
 precious qualities in the production of 
 the " Dance " itself, it would be natural 
 to suppose that there was little left of 
 them for other exigency. This at least 
 was my stupid view; I fancied and half- 
 fancy still, thdX prudence, much mote than 
 any other quality, was responsible for the 
 suppression of the best third of the 
 name. If Mr. Herman met the recep- 
 tion he perhaps dreaded, why, Mr. Ru- 
 
I 1 8 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 lofson would be, legally, at all events, 
 quite safe. It seemed merely a literary 
 '' hege," till it was determined which way 
 blew the wind. But of course I blun- 
 dered. It was the distress at the "arraign- 
 ment of his fellow-man "(! ) (not even a 
 crocodile tear for us), that made him hide 
 his face for shame ! Poor fellow ! The 
 question at issue having been discussed 
 by nte, and the "good thing" done for the 
 world, I have thus taken the liberty of 
 glancing at the author, especially as he 
 invites us to do so. Enough of him, how- 
 ever. Let me turn now to the " extracts," 
 and endeavor to traverse this rather slip- 
 pery ground without stumbling. 
 
 The old breast-work of "no direct 
 permission," where names to letters are 
 suppressed, is thrown up at the outset. 
 It will be rated at its true value by the 
 public. Many of those " extracts " are 
 undouht^dly genuine, if we can use such 
 a term to articles that have been written 
 
THE ''ALTA BAMBOOZLED. I I9 
 
 out first by Mr. H. hitnselfov his friends 
 and then presented to editors for publi- 
 cation — to office-clerks for insertion when 
 necessary, and to individuals for signature. 
 Such eulogies can, as every one knows, 
 be manufactured by the cord, and will 
 deceive none but the most inexperi- 
 enced. The style in five cases out of 
 six will give us all the light needed, as 
 to the origin, like a star. In this way, 
 undoubtedly was the scrap ot June 17th, 
 from the Alta, wrung in on the good- 
 nature of the editors of that paper. The 
 chances are a hundred to one that they 
 had not read a line of the " Dance," 
 when the quoted extract was handed in 
 to them. They are not the men to 
 allow, knowingly, their paper to be used 
 to spread the circulation of a book that 
 would deprave the young and operate 
 as a pestilence in families. Not at all ; 
 theirs has always been a clean sheet, and 
 has never, in the most remote way, been 
 the abettor of immorality. 
 
1 20 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 But the Bulletin was not so compliant, 
 though we understand no efforts were 
 spared to get its endorsement. The 
 literary Cerberus at its door was too 
 keen and sensitive to have matter so 
 offensive foisted on him, or to be 
 sopped to sleep by the " moral pur- 
 posed The Ho7ne Newspaper was simi- 
 larly bamboozled, I presume, though be- 
 ing a weekly, it would have less excuse 
 than the Alta. The style and matter of 
 the extract from the Evangel of June 
 14th, tells, I think, the tale. But on the 
 supposition that this paper did write 
 what is inserted, I beg leave to tell its 
 editor that the real name of that " gentle- 
 man of high standing," the author, does 
 furnish all the '' evidence requisite " to 
 prove for the thinking portion of our 
 citizens that the purpose of his book was 
 anything but what he pretends. " In- 
 tegrity of purpose," indeed! Integrity 
 of fiddlesticks ! The Christian Advo- 
 
FOUR MINUTES TO LEAVE." 12 1 
 
 ca^e o( sa.mQ date likewise inserted his 
 self-praise. It will not be necessary, for 
 obvious reasons, to draw any conclusions 
 from what we might read in the £c/io 
 or News Letter. The last devotes a 
 lengthy paragraph to a fulsome lauda- 
 tion of the '' Dance " and the author, 
 speaking of the latter as " eminent " (?) 
 in "social circles." No doubt; but we 
 we are not told on which side of zero 
 lies his Emi7ience. It is laughable how 
 the paper, or rather the author, tries 
 to choke us women off from uttering 
 a word in reply to his slanders, by say- 
 ing that we " will doubtless lose our 
 temper and confess our sin by our indig- 
 nation /" This is somewhat like the 
 trick which many may remember that 
 an Eastern lecturess played upon her au- 
 dience lest they " might grow skittish " 
 and leave her to declaim to empty 
 benches. We are not aware of having 
 in the least lost our temper, and as to the 
 
122 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 ''gentlemen!' they will not think that Mr. 
 Herman's '' looking-glass " detracts from 
 their features a particle. For them it has 
 no quicksilver whatever. The Chroni- 
 cle notice amounts to nothing. Three 
 lines, guarded and non-committal. It 
 wisely waits for the alterain partem, 
 probably, before unmasking its batteries. 
 The extract from the Post of June i6th 
 was written for, not by that paper. 
 
 Now come the anonymous letters; upon 
 two (from ladies) I have commented in 
 a previous chapter. 
 
 Two clergymen speak ; one a Rev- 
 erend Father of St. Ignatius College, 
 who, in his commendable zeal to aid what 
 he thinks the cause of morality, plays 
 unconsciously into Mr*. Herman's hands, 
 furthering the cause of vice by wishing 
 that all, ''even young ladies''! may read 
 his book. And two other Catholic clergy- 
 men- are still more emphatic in their ad- 
 miration for a work the evil of which no 
 
MORE NAMELESS LADIES. 1 23 
 
 one may calculate. It is astonishing how 
 worthy and well-meaning people can be 
 hood-winked by a cunning business man, 
 spiritually dressed up with care, to play 
 his moral role ! None seem so easily de- 
 ceived as clergymen. 
 
 A few lines from each of a dozen 
 or so gentlemen (names given) then 
 follow, but they call for no special com- 
 ment, being all of a similar character. 
 A lady of "high social standing" in 
 Washington, sends him a line and a 
 half. As his ladies of " high standing" 
 never have names, we may ignore them 
 altogether. A Santa Barbara lady, again 
 of the "best," but nameless, writes: "your 
 choice(!) yet plain language, leaves no 
 room for misinterpretation," etc. Can 
 we regard this lady (if not a myth) in any 
 other light than as a sly quiz "^ I think 
 not. Look out, Mr. H.; you cannot draw 
 the hood over our sex as easily as you do 
 over your own. 
 
124 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 I shall end this ''extract "-re view, by 
 making a few remarks upon Mrs. Gen- 
 eral Shermans letter (the original of 
 which the Alta editors say they saw) 
 published a few days ago. Poor 
 credulous Mrs. Sherman ! She re- 
 ceived a letter from Father Accolti, and 
 thinks that our hero may be suffering the 
 pains of martyrdom, and hastens to send 
 him comfort and condolence. She soothes 
 the virtuous but too courageous man, 
 hopes he will not be too ''cast down," 
 and will not mind what may be said of 
 him — an advice that, before the storm 
 blows over, he may find difficult to fol- 
 low. She believes every word he writes, 
 though she would 7iever have imagined the 
 half of what he says to be ti^ue !! Whew ! 
 What an admission ! How wonderful is 
 faith ! What eyes it can give us ! If 
 this married lady needed the lenses of 
 Mr. Herman's vision to see what was 
 invisible without them, can it be true 
 
MRS. SHERMAN UPSETS THE PAIL. 1 25 
 
 what he asserts — that, with all other 
 opportunities to be wise, '' the youth of 
 either sex " do not need the " Dance of 
 Death " to teach them what they could 
 easily know without it f Mrs. Sherman's 
 admission is all the more conclusive on 
 this point, as she neither saw nor meant 
 the inference. She stamps the " Dance" 
 as a revelation (less divine than diabol- 
 ical, I fear) quite undiscoverable by man s 
 unaided powers, or woman's either. And 
 so it must rerhain. 
 
 We, too, Mrs. Sherman, would be de- 
 lighted to know the name of that '* emi- 
 nent and renowned " lady-correspondent 
 of your hero, but our just curiosity will 
 never be gratified. There is no fear, 
 kind, credulous Mrs. Sherman, that any 
 " wrong lady " will be " hounded by the 
 newspapers " for the alleged communi- 
 cation to Mr. H.; they know well enough 
 how unassailable is the character of the 
 realy that is, ideal lady, and will not 
 
126 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 give your suffering hero a chance to have 
 a laugh at their expense. Be comforted, 
 Mrs. Sherman; no lady, I vouch for it, 
 will be brought to grief 
 
 Before closing these critical remarks, 
 I must not omit to notice the decided 
 stand that three papers of this city have 
 nobly taken against the "Dance." In 
 the Daily Stock Exchange of August 2 ist„ 
 is published a thoughtful and eloquent 
 protest, from a lady, against this rniser- 
 ab le production of — to quote her words 
 — " a diseased or degraded being." Its 
 blighting influence is rapidly spreading, 
 she declares, and closes by hoping that 
 the private feelings of parents regarding 
 it will soon be publicly expressed, and 
 a stop thus put to its tide of corruption. 
 This lady has my hearty thanks, and 
 most friendly greeting for her out-spoken 
 indignation and warning. As a com- 
 ment upon her letter, the editor simply 
 remarks that he hopes the police author- 
 
BURNS "the dance. I 27 
 
 ities will soon suppress this " nasty book;" 
 which hope, I sincerely trust, he will soon 
 see realized. 
 
 The second paper is the Argonaut, a 
 critical and literary Weekly of marked 
 ability, that is rapidly winning its way to 
 public favor. How this journal flayed 
 the *' Dance," before casting it to the 
 flames, can be seen in the subjoined ex- 
 tract : 
 
 "Mr. Rulofson, the photographer, has written, 
 under the nom de plume of WiUiam Herman, an 
 incomparably indecent work, unfit for the reading 
 of anybody, and calculated to do as much ill as 
 such bold and bad trash can do. Its very nasti- 
 ness will disarm it to a certain extent. It will be 
 excluded from all decent society. We are sorry to 
 say it is sold by respectable book-sellers, and we are 
 utterly disgusted that it has received the endorse- 
 ment of certain unthinking newspapers, unreflecting 
 clergymen, and foolish women. 
 
 ** Immodest words admit of no defense, 
 For want of decency is want of sense." 
 
 After reading the copy presented to us for review, 
 we burned it." 
 
 And last in order of time, but not least, 
 
128 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 is the withering onslaught in the Spirit 
 of the Times of Sept. 8th, by its editor. 
 We feel more secure and proud to know 
 that such a spirit exists and asserts itself 
 when necessary, and hope that San Fran- 
 cisco will show that she is not behind 
 this, the true Spirit of the Times, by 
 acting upon the editor's indignant call for 
 the stoppage of the further circulation 
 of so deadly a poison. We recommend 
 the perusal of the article to all interested 
 in the protection and welfare of our city. 
 
 The good examples of these papers, 
 especially the last, should have stimulated 
 before now, others to speak or act in be- 
 half of public morality. 
 
 There appeared last month in a Daily 
 (not particularly scrupulous) of this city> 
 the following : 
 
 A BAWDY BOOK. 
 
 An English Opinion of the " Dance of Death." 
 
 A couple of months ago a gentleman of this city 
 mailed a copy of the rather notoriou production 
 
"DANCE "KNOWS ITSELF. 1 29 
 
 called The Datice of Death, to a friend in London, 
 a well-known literary man, making the suggestion 
 that a re-publication there might prove profitable. 
 Yesterday the San Franciscan received a letter from 
 his friend in which this agreeable little passage oc- 
 curs. 
 
 " The book has arrived and I have read it. I 
 sincerely trust it may never be my fate to look upon 
 its like again. Do you forget that there is an in- 
 stitution in this country known as ' The Society for 
 the Suppression of Vice ?' Why, if we were to pub- 
 lish this filthy book we should be summoned to the 
 Police Court for seUing an obscene publication, and 
 we should richly deserve it ! Any pure-minded 
 woman would receive a deeper moral blight in read- 
 ing three of these pages than she possibly could in 
 waltzing every night, all her life long, unless, indeed, 
 she happened to be cursed with a partner in the 
 dance, such as the filthy beast that wrote the book; 
 for to my mind it could not be written by any other 
 than a degraded intellect. Excuse my speaking 
 strongly, but you say it is written by an acquain- 
 tance of yours. I am glad he is not among your 
 friends." 
 
 Now, I think I can make even a bet- 
 ter use for public benefit of this "English 
 
130 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 opinion " than did " Leone," in the Stock 
 Exchange. She, innocent soul, treated 
 it as genuine, and quoted from it. True, 
 the sentiments as above are most just and 
 appropriate, but the beauty of the mat- 
 ter, Leone, is, that they were written 
 by the author himself, or his " right 
 bower," — business tricks, you know. So 
 that you can have Rulofson himself as 
 your Cicerone into the very heart of the 
 Rulofson cavern ; a most reliable, if not 
 entertaining or desirable guide ! In this 
 we have again his own genuhie opinion 
 of what his book can a7id will ef^ect, 
 just as I exposed it in the preceding 
 chapter, regarding the fulfilment of the 
 p7^ophecy. "Any pure-minded woman 
 would receive a deeper moral blight in 
 reading three of its pages," etc. Who 
 shall now say that my whip-caption to 
 this chapter if applied to him would be 
 unjust ? Who can -afford to shed tears 
 if a little of his leprous hide comes 
 away. 
 
FAREWELL, SWEET '* DANCE !" I3I 
 
 A great many personal remarks upon 
 "this same Wm. Herman," for reasons, 
 my friends, that you can imagine, I 
 have abstained from making. One 
 was that they were unnecessary. Still, 
 as I undertook to contribute my mite 
 to nullify the effect of this book of 
 his, some may think I need not 
 have been so squeamish. But they 
 should reflect that it would be wholly 
 abhorrent to me and unbecoming a lady 
 to explore the depths of the cavern from 
 which issued so fetid a child as the 
 " Dance." And to those who, on the 
 contrary, think I have transgressed even 
 in what I have written, I beg to say, in 
 the words of the dramatist : 
 
 "Pray, forgive me, 
 If I have used myself unmannerly^ 
 You knovyr I am a woman, lacking wit, 
 To make a seemly answer to such as he" 
 
 Fare well, sweet *'Dance of Death," fare- 
 well ! I have lingered too long in thy 
 
132 
 
 THE DANCE OF LIFE. 
 
 Upas-shade, and must now move forever 
 away from thy baneful atmosphere into 
 the life-giving sunshine. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY— TEL. NO. 642^405 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subjea to immediate recall. 
 
 imdW kpij 
 
 ■f^ 
 
 Apn\ 4. <9a 
 
 MAK :? 2 1882 
 
 '^ -8 PM o 6 
 
 ^ 
 
 UlAg 1 
 
 zn± 
 
 wc?oci«cP^0V201987 — 
 
 Pfer 
 
 0& 
 
 Wv. 
 
 iSc 
 
 MisK NOV^^^%dfeTrJ)^ig ^ 
 
 IRt^ 
 
 HK I J ?Q 
 
 5^C 
 
 J 
 
 i 
 
 rr 
 
 2 
 
 ^»irr+ 
 
 ■trt^ 
 
 LD21A-60 
 (X5382slO) 
 
 ^^ut?m^^jH~ 
 
 Berkeley 
 
 "IP 
 
nPNPRAI MRRARY.Iir RPRI^PI Py