PARLOR DANCING.


Some contend that there is no harm in parlor dancing. How many parents
are able to restrict their children to parlor dancing only? Not one in
ten thousand.

Dancing is too fascinating, and they who were at first content with
parlor dancing soon want something else, and will, for the sake of
dancing, go to almost any place.

If private dancing is allowed, and all else strictly forbidden, the
child will often deceive his parents and dance at times and in places
that they know not of.

I have known young people to be at Sunday night dances, and in low
company, when their parents (who only allow parlor dancing) thought they
were at church.

They made a practice of going to the church and remaining long enough to
get the text of the pastor's discourse, and then going away to spend
the time in dancing, and if questioned, they were able to give the text
of the evening's sermon, and the trusting parents would not dream of
their having been any where but at church.

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 30th, 1892, and 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