From the Ball-Room to Hell by Thomas A. Faulkner

Author:Thomas A. Faulkner [Faulkner, Thomas A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: Ah5DAQAAMAAJ
Publisher: Henry bros. & Company
Published: 1894-01-15T05:32:43+00:00

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CHAPTER III.

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 their dresses up to keep them from getting soiled and wet as they danced.

This is usually the result of teaching the child to dance and then restricting them 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.

There are professing Christians who condemn the sale of liquor, advocate the closing of saloons, and frown on Sunday picnics and other amusements, who allow their own children to attend so-called select dancing parties.

In these places are taught the rudiments of an education which may make them graduates of the saloon or the brothel.

I do not say that it always does, but I do say that it often does.

The safe side is the best side. Keep them from taking the first step to ruin, and they can never take the last.

Where did the majority of the drunkards take their first drink? Where did the gambler play his first card? Where did three-fourths of the women, who are to-day living a life of shame, have a man's arm about them for the first time?

Let me answer.

The first drink of the drunkard was just a social glass.

The first game of the gambler was just a social game.

And three-fourths of the outcasts had a man's arm about them for the first time when they were young girls at a social dance.

There are in San Francisco 2,500 abandoned women. Prof. La Floris says: "I can safely say that three-fourths of these women were led to their downfall through the influence of dancing.

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