The Dance of Death

But, stay--I have a condition to make before I accept of your company. Have you read the preface? "No, of course not; who reads prefaces?" Very well, just oblige me by making mi...

_"The Dance is the spur of lust--a circle of which the Devil himself is the centre. Many women that use it have come dishonest home, most indifferent, none better."_--Petrarch.

lready I see the face of the reader grow red with indignation. "This is a calumniator, an infamous detractor, an envious pessimist, a hater of all that is innocently enjoyable!"...

et us now consider the female element in this immodesty. Is the woman equally to blame with the man? Is she the unconscious instrument of his lust, or the conscious sharer in it...

he conversation I have given in the last chapter is faithfully reported--it is exact in spirit very nearly so in letter; we may surely believe that the clergyman from whom I hav...

"_Il fault bien dire que la danse est quasi le comble de tous vices * * * * c'est le commencement d'une ordure, laquelle je ne veux declarer. Pour en parler rondement, il m'est...

one time ago a lady friend said to me: "How is it that while so many of you gentlemen are fond of dancing until you are married, yet from that moment few of you can be induced t...

here are, of course, many other classes of waltzers to whom I might revert, though I have sought in vain for a single one that is entirely free from reproach. It is however time...

_"So she looks into her heart, and lo! Vacucæ sedes et 'mania arcana * * * And the man is himself, and the woman herself, that dream of love is over as everything else is over i...

nd now if I have succeeded in showing the modern dance as it is and the dancers as they are, together with the almost inevitable effects of the evil upon those who indulge in it...