Dancing in Heathen Countries.
By Editor
THE following extract from Dr. Butler’s “Land of the Veda,” we commend to the votaries and apologists of the dance. It may not, by itself, be deemed convincing, but it contains food for reflection: “No man in India would allow his wife or daughter to dance, and as to dancing with another man, he would forsake her forever as a woman lost to virtue and modesty, if she were to attempt it. “In their observation of white women, there is nothing that so much perplexes them as the fact that fathers and husbands will permit their wives and daughters to indulge in promiscuous dancing. No argument will convince them that that act is such as a virtuous female should practice, or that its tendency is not licentious. The prevalence of the practice in ‘Christian’ nations makes our holy religion—which they suppose must allow it—to be abhorred by many of them, and often it is cast in the teeth of our missionaries when preaching to them. But what would these heathen say could they enter our operas and theatres, and see the shocking exposure of their persons which our public women there present before mixed assemblies? Yet they would be ten times more astonished that ladies of virtue and reputation should be found there accompanied by their daughters, to witness the sight, and that, too, in the presence of the other sex! But then, they are only heathen, and don’t appreciate the high accomplishments of Christian civilization! Still, Heaven grant that the future church of India may ever retain at least this item of the prejudice of their forefathers! Dancing forms, there, no part of a daughter’s education, and it never will; that is, unless they become corrupted by ‘Christian’ example.”