IS IT WRONG TO ATTEND THE DANCING SCHOOL?
By Eben Bumstead
I KNOW a superintendent of a Sunday-school who has his boy take lessons in dancing. It is well known that multitudes in the churches think the same course to be a wise one. But how many of these Christian parents have any knowledge of the dance as it exists to-day? If they knew but one-tenth of the evil that takes place in, and results from, the dance-halls, and even private parlor dances, we feel sure that they would at once take their children from so great danger. What can be the object of this Sunday-school superintendent, but that his boy may learn to do as the world does, to mingle more gracefully in its society, to spend his evenings in that which they think is the queen of worldly amusements. If this be his object, how can it be reconciled with the admonitions: "Be not conformed to this world" (Rom. 12:2); "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15); "A friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4:4)? The Bible clearly indicates that there is to be a dividing line between the world and the disciple of Christ. On which side is the dance? Great as is this evil, there seems to be almost no voice to speak out and warn against its bold effrontery. The dancing-school is not only tolerated, but is supported by a large portion of the church, while in many cases Christian people open their parlors for private dances. I know of an academy for young ladies, members of whose board of directors are among the foremost Congregational ministers of Massachusetts, that allows the girls to have weekly dances among themselves. Tho they come from Christian homes, and may have been taught by watchful parents to look upon dancing as a sin of worldliness, yet in this seminary, which is one of our very best, they have every encouragement and means to learn to dance. This season there was only one student who had the courage to refuse. In answer to the question so commonly asked, "What harm can there be in parlor and boarding-school dancing?" we will give the words of Mr. T. A. Faulkner, ex-dancing master, ex-champion dancer, and ex-president of Dancing Masters' Association of the Pacific Coast:— In these places are taught the rudiments of an education which may make them graduates of a saloon or the brothel. I do not say that it always does, but I do say that it often does. I only wish that certain parents who think they are restricting their children to "parlor dancing at home only," could have been with me the night of May 30, 1892, and have seen, as I did, their girls, some of them but twelve or fourteen years of age, dancing in a public saloon, where so much beer had been spilt on the floor that the women had to hold their dresses up to keep them from getting soiled and wet as they danced. This is usually the result of teaching a child to dance, and then to restrict it to home dancing. If they once become fascinated with it, they must, and will, by some means, fair or foul, have more of it than their homes afford. The safe side is the best side. Keep them from taking the first step to ruin, and they can never take the last. It is a sad commentary on the dancing-school that dancing-masters find it necessary to close their schools for a season, lest the young ladies who have been ruined bring the school into disgrace, as is shown by Mr. Faulkner in the following incident:— I met on the train, while leaving town one day, a young woman who, a few months before, had been a member of my select dancing academy. She had been ruined there, and was one of the discarded ones when the school was closed for a few weeks, as all dancing-schools have to be every little while, to get rid of those girls who have met with a fate similar to hers. I entered into conversation with her, and found she could no longer endure being shunned and slighted by all her old companions, and was running away from home. I knew that her parents would be heart-broken, and that she, without the protection of a home, would soon sink into utter abandonment, and I tried every persuasion to induce her to return to the home she was leaving. I—who was still teaching the very thing which had been her ruin, now that self-respect and all that life was worth living for, was lost to her forever—I tried to save her from further degradation. After I had argued for some time with her, she turned fiercely upon me, her once beautiful eyes now filled with a desperation born of despair, and said, with a look and tone of reproach which I shall never forget: "Mr. Faulkner, when you will close your dancing-schools and stop this business, which is sending so many girls by swift stages on a straight road to hell, then, sir, and not till then, will I think of reform." The dancing-master was stirred by her words. He renounced the business, and is to-day a devoted follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. The case of this young woman is not one of a few, but of many. It is the story of three-fourths of the harlots in our cities. Mission workers who have taken statistics among fallen women, tell us that seventy-five per cent. ascribe the first cause of their downfall to dancing. Professor La Floris says: "I can safely say that three-fourths of these women (2,500 abandoned women in San Francisco) were led to their downfall through the influence of dancing." A chief of police of New York City has said that "three-fourths of the women and girls who are living lives of immorality, have been led from the path of virtue through the dance." My only object in writing on the unpopular side of a popular subject is that Christian parents may be aroused to the danger their children are in, if they dance; and that those parents who are debating the question of sending their children to dancing-schools, may have a few reasons why it is not a wise thing to do. A friend told me that his wife took into their home a young girl with an illegitimate child, who one day said to his wife: "Mrs. —, do not ever allow your daughters to attend a dancing-school. When my father sent me to the dancing-school, he started me on the way to hell."