What could be more innocent than a birthday festival? All the kings
from the time of Pharaoh had celebrated such days; and why not Herod?
It was right that the palace should be lighted, and that the cymbals
should clap, and that the royal guests should go to a banquet; but,
before the rioting and wassail that closed the scene of that day,
every pure nature revolts.

Behold the work, the influence, and the end of an infamous dancer!

I am, by natural temperament and religious theory, utterly opposed
to the position of those who are horrified at every demonstration
of mirth and playfulness in social life, and who seem to think that
everything, decent and immortal, depends upon the style in which
people carry their feet. On the other hand, I can see nothing but
ruin, moral and physical, in the dissipations of the ball-room, which
have despoiled thousands of young men and women of all that gives
dignity to character, or usefulness to life.

Dancing has been styled "the graceful movement of the body adjusted
by art, to the measures or tune of instruments, or of the voice." All
nations have danced. The ancients thought that Pollux and Castor at
first taught the practice to the Lacedæmonians; but, whatever be its
origin, all climes have adopted it.

In other days there were festal dances, and funeral dances, and
military dances, and "mediatorial" dances, and bacchanalian dances.
Queens and lords have swayed to and fro in their gardens; and the
rough men of the backwoods in this way have roused up the echo of the
forest. There seems to be something in lively and coherent sounds to