DANCING AND BALLS.
"_They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their
children dance._" Job xxi, 11.
Let us now turn from outdoor diversions to those amusements which do
not, of necessity, demand daylight and space for their cultivation.
Dancing is one of these; and as attempts are being made at the present
time to introduce it into circles whence it has hitherto been rigidly
excluded, we honor it with the first place in this part of the
discussion, and propose to give it all due attention. It is presumed
that the advocates of dancing will insist, at the outset, that we shall
make a distinction among the various fashionable dances of the times. It
is not probable that any reader of this volume will attempt to defend
the "German," or round dances. It is a shameful, revolting spectacle to
see a young girl whirling around in the arms of a man who perhaps an
hour ago was an utter stranger to her, her head leaning upon his breast,
and their whole persons in closest contact. This style is positively
immodest, corrupting, offensive to morals, as well as to delicacy and
refinement. How dare a young man propose any such performance to a lady
for whom he has a shadow of respect? How can any young lady, who
respects herself, submit to it?
But cotillons and quadrilles, we are told, are different; they are
modest, graceful, and harmless. Doubtless there is a difference, and yet
they differ only as the varioloid differs from the worse disease.
It is not necessary to prove that the mere motion is sinful in order
to condemn it; nor need we assail the personal character of all who
plead for dancing, in one form or another, as an innocent amusement. The
abstract possibility of its being so practiced as to render it a
healthful exercise may be admitted. I am acquainted with a gentleman of
more than three-score years and ten, whose erect form and happy face,
ruddy with health and radiant with kindness and inward peace, are
pleasant to see. Meeting him in the street one day, I asked him how he
managed to be young when he was old--how he contrived to keep up the
life and bloom of Spring amid the chill winds and gathering clouds of
Winter. In reply, he alluded reverently to the Divine Master, whom he
serves in gladness of heart, as the source of all blessing, and then
added: "I take care of my health. I take exercise. I rise early in the
morning, and among the very first things that I do I put on a pair of
soft slippers, go up into the attic of my house, and then go round and
round in a circle, on a gentle run, till I am in a pleasant glow. This
makes me feel well and cheerful all day."
Now, if any advocate of dancing will practice it only as our aged
friend practices his peculiar exercise, we bring no accusation against
his sanitary measures; we have no controversy with his principles or his
performances. We will even go so far as to confess the beauty of certain
fancy pictures of innocent dancing in the family circle, wherein one
daughter presides at the piano, and the rest of the children whirl about
in their graceful evolutions, till father and mother feel the happy
contagion, and, starting up, join in the mirth; and even the
white-haired grandsire looks on admiringly, and keeps time with his best
foot, and applauds with his cane, and then calls the household to order
for evening prayers. We do not happen to know any "happy family" where
devotion and dancing live together on such excellent terms;
nevertheless, extraordinary things do occur in the world, and this may
possibly be among them.
But all this does not shake the settled conviction that it would be
unwise to cultivate dancing of any sort as an amusement, or even to
tolerate it. The reasons upon which this conclusion is based are
numerous and weighty.
1. _Dancing as it is usually practiced, and will continue to be
practiced, if at all, lacks the elements of true recreation._
It is folly to talk of sending children to dancing schools, and then
confine their performances to the family circle. Dancing is essentially
an exhibition which addresses the eye of the spectator, and craves
admiration. It tends directly to cultivate the love of display and of
the praise which it elicits, a passion as avaricious in its way as the
miser's greed of gold. Introduce dancing generally, and of the youth who
attain a degree of proficiency not a few will soon tire of the approval
of the little circle, and thirst for the applause of the multitude. They
who imagine that they have acquired a grace and a skill which can not
fail to win the praises of all beholders, will not be content to hide
their light under the bushel of home, and soon the performances in the
private parlor will be considered of no account, except as rehearsals
for more public displays, and the ball-room will be looked upon as the
proper field where artistic ambition is to win its laurels.
And in this form dancing is detrimental to soul and body. The late
hours which it involves are a fatal objection to it. The confined
atmosphere in which it is practiced is injurious. The style of the
refreshments common on such occasions, and the untimely hour when they
are taken, increase the evil. The undue excitement exhausts instead of
invigorating the vital powers. The sudden transitions from the heated
ball-room to the chill night air are not safe, as many an early grave
can testify. These things conspire to make a ball or a dancing party a
direct attack upon the health of those who attend it. Instead of
invigorating the weak, it requires vigor to endure the exhausting
strain. A single night thus spent will make its visible mark upon the
face. They who escape with the least injury are languid and dull, and
perhaps irritable, for days afterward, while some are totally unfitted
for their usual avocations, and require time to recover, as if from an
attack of illness. While physical health is thus impaired or imperiled,
there is no promise of mental or moral improvement to compensate the
injury. There is no time for rational conversation, and any attempt in
that direction would be deemed out of place. The liveliest imagination
can see no moral good in the performance. The whole thing produces no
higher pleasure than engine-boys feel while running in search of the
fire; and in the matter of aching heads and low spirits, it is probable
that those who run with the engine and those who attend the ball are
about alike the next day.
2. _Dancing has had a historic name._
There was, indeed, in ancient times, a solemn religious ceremony,
which, through the poverty of human language, was called dancing. When
Pharaoh and his host sank into the depths of the sea, while Israel stood
safe upon the shore, Miriam and her maidens came forth with timbrels and
with dances, and sang to the Lord a lofty anthem of praise and
thanksgiving. When David brought home the ark of God he danced before
it; but it was a strictly religious ceremony, nothing like the caperings
and curvetings of our own day. There is no intimation whatever that
Miriam and her maidens, or David, ever danced except on such occasions.
Pleasure dances have been almost universally held in bad repute. The
daughter of Herodias danced to please Herod, as he sat at the banquet,
bewildered with wine; but the performer was one who could lightly ask
for the life of an innocent man and a devoted servant of God; and the
royal spectator was a tyrant, who could carelessly order his execution.
In Rome, and Athens, and Ephesus the dancing was done by the degraded
and the vile, who employed it as a means of advertising their
profession. The dancers of Egypt and India at the present day are of the
same character.
Now, I do not know that it would be right for me to denounce
indiscriminately all who perform publicly in places of amusement in our
cities and towns, yet it is safe for me to say that a dancing girl,
however loudly her fame may be trumpeted by the newspapers, finds her
professional reputation every-where a bar to her reception into good
society. Why should it be so? It certainly is not because of the mere
publicity of professional life. If it were, then Miss Dickinson and Miss
Evans, and scores of others, would find themselves in the same
condemnation, instead of being honored and applauded. Why a female
public lecturer should be respected, and a female public dancer despised
and shunned, I can not understand, unless there is something in dancing
itself, or in the character of those who have made it their profession,
that has merited condemnation. Ladies of the highest respectability go
to hear the lecturer, and at the close crowd around the desk to be
introduced to her; other ladies, certainly no more scrupulous in regard
to their associations, go to see the dancer perform, and the next day
will not look at her in the street. What makes the difference? Will the
apologist for dancing explain?
3. _A love for dancing parties and balls is universally deemed
inconsistent with the seriousness and devotion which characterize a true
Christian._
Dancing is regarded as the favorite diversion of the vain and the
frivolous. Nominal Christians may be found at balls and dancing
assemblies, but they are persons who have no weight of Christian
character, and exert no influence in favor of religion. The world,
unconvicted and careless, rather likes such professors of religion,
because their example is an opiate wherewith to quiet an occasional pang
of conscience. The worldly and the prayerless think more favorably of
themselves and of their prospects of heaven when they see that Church
members resemble them so closely. But when the worldly man is convinced
of sin, and desires to find pardon, he never sends for one of these
unfaithful professors to give him spiritual counsel. When the wicked are
about to die, they do not want prayer offered at their bedside by any of
these fiddling, dancing, wine-bibbing, honorary members of the Church.
They name men and women of undoubted piety. They suspect those who can
join them in their follies and feel no condemnation. They do not
estimate very highly a Christian profession which exerts so little
control over those that make it. Nay, rebuke a scorner for his sins, and
in many cases he will seek to defend himself by a sneering allusion to
those very professors of religion who verily believe that they were
making capital for their Church by showing that it can not be suspected
of being "Puritanic."
4. _Dancing involves undesirable associations._
We bring no indiscriminate accusations against those who love to
dance. In almost every community where it is cultivated to any great
extent, it will not be confined to any particular class nor to any one
moral level. Still, if we are to tell the whole truth, it must be stated
that dancing prevails less as you ascend the scale of virtue,
intelligence, and religion, and more as you go down to explore the
realms of ignorance and vice. However numerous and, after their fashion,
respectable its votaries may be, there is a line above which it never
prevails. Like the deluge in the days of Noah, it fills the valleys
first, and covers the low places; but, unlike the deluge, there are
elevations which the swelling waters never reach, heights upon which the
dark tide never shows even its spray. In our great cities, those
sections which are recognized as the homes and dens of vice and
degradation, the very region and shadow of death, abound in
dance-houses; and the sound of the violin and of many trampling feet
mingles nightly with the noise of rage and blasphemy, and the hoarse
clamor of bloody strife. Intemperance and infamy are foul birds which
agree well in the same nest with dancing. But as you ascend the scale,
not only the more gross forms of vice, but the dance is left behind long
before you reach the highest altitudes. The devotedly pious, the truly
pure in heart, do not dance. In all ages of the Church such spirits have
always kept aloof from the follies of their times, and had "no
fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness."
They who give themselves to this amusement, therefore, turn away from
the best examples of pure and undefiled religion, and the noblest,
holiest fellowship within their reach. They ally themselves with the
worldly, the thoughtless, the prayerless, the gay butterflies of fashion
and soulless pleasure. They throw themselves among influences in the
highest degree unfavorable to sober views of life, and the earnest,
thorough performance of its great duties. They voluntarily leave the
rock and the shore of safety to launch upon a treacherous stream, the
rippling music of whose waters will soon cease, and the bloom of whose
flowery banks will soon disappear, and whose current, silent but swift
and strong, bear them steadily away from light and hope down to despair,
remorse, and ruin.
Dancing wastes time, wastes health, scatters serious thought,
compromises Christian character, leads to entangling associations with
frivolous minds and careless hearts. It is as sure a foe to intellectual
growth as to moral progress. Young people who are famed as "beautiful
dancers" are generally good for nothing else. The time that should be
devoted to something valuable is spent in practicing posture-making
before a mirror, or a professor of the high art, who shows them how to
step so, and so, and so; while God calls, the Savior waits, life wanes,
and the tremendous realities of the eternal world every moment come
nearer. Even Cicero, the heathen moralist, affirms that "no man in his
senses will dance." The dancing-master is the devil's drill-sergeant,
just as the theater is the devil's church.
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