There is No Harm in Dancing by W. E. Penn
page 26 of 43 (60%)
page 26 of 43 (60%)
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arms?_ If you never did, the first opportunity you have, take a good
look at a cat's eyes in the dark and in imagination transfer them to the young wife's head, and you will have a very correct idea of how _sweet_ and _amiable_ she looks. Who among the living will ever forget that poor unfortunate girl, in the State of Georgia, who was assassinated in the ball room by a jealous young wife? The civilized world was shocked by the announcement of this terrible tragedy, which was purely the fruit of the ball room. These parties were not of the low and vulgar, but were of the society people of the age. How many husbands have in the same way and for the same cause had all the baser, brutish passions aroused to such an extent as to have their reasoning faculties dethroned, and have been driven by the raging devils within to commit many of the greatest, most shameful and most disgraceful crimes that ever blackened the records of a criminal court? How many have cursed and abused their wives while on the way home from the ball room? How many, after their arrival at home, have used their superior physical strength in abusing their wives in a most shameful and disgraceful manner? How much of all this was the result of a frenzied imagination, and not for any real misconduct? How many of all these cruel wrongs and outrages are never known except by the parties themselves? How many fathers and mothers have neglected their children by leaving them in incompetent and unsafe hands, while they spent the night in the ball room? How many husbands have left their wives, in poor health, sometimes sick in bed, with two or three little children crying around them, while they have spent the night in the ball room dancing with other women? How many men and women, and especially women, from physical and mental causes superinduced by the effects of the ball room, have been driven to madness, and have thus become inmates of insane asylums, or have deliberately taken their own lives? O! for the pen of a |
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