piercing, sweet, and that she was swinging in blissful time to it. When
the waltz tune came to an end at last the dancers stopped, gasping with
the heat, and swaying with the giddiness of the dance.

"Come along," said the lodger, "and have a beer." When Annie shook her
head he exclaimed: "Aw, yuh have to. The Sullivans gets the room rent
free, but the fellers upstairs has bar privileges, and yuh have to buy
a beer off of 'em oncet in a while. They've gotta get something out of
it."

I do not know whether Annie yielded then or later. But ultimately she
learned to drink beer for the benefit of philanthropists who furnish
dance halls rent free, and also to quench a thirst rendered unbearable
by heat and dust. They seldom open the windows in these places.
Sometimes they even nail the windows down. A well-ventilated room means
poor business at the bar.

Annie Donnelly became a dance-hall _habitué_. Not because she was
viciously inclined; not because she was abnormal; but because she was
decidedly normal in all her instincts and desires.

Besides, it is easy to get the dance-hall habit. At almost every dance
invitations to other dances are distributed with a lavish hand. These
invitations, on cheap printed cards, are scattered broadcast over chairs
and benches, on the floors, and even on the bar itself. They are locally
known as "throw-aways." Here are a few specimens, from which you may
form an idea of the quality of dance halls, and the kind of
people--almost the only kind of people--who offer pleasure to the
starved hearts of girls like Annie Donnelly. These are actual
invitations picked up in an East Side dance hall by the head worker of