The second reason why so many dancing girls are ruined is obvious, when
one considers how many fiends there are hanging about the dancing
schools and ball-rooms, for this purpose alone, some of them for their
own gratification, and others for the living there is to be made from
it. I am personally acquainted with men who are professional seducers,
and who are to-day making a living in just this way. They are fine
looking, good conversationalists and elegant dancers. They buy their
admittance to the select (?) dancing school by paying an extra fee, and
know just what snares to lay and what arts to practice upon the innocent
girls they meet there to induce them to yield to their diabolical
solicitations, and after having satisfied their own desires and ruined
the girls they entice them to the brothel where they receive a certain
sum of money from the landlady, rated according to their beauty and
form.
Can you wonder when the degrading, lust-creating influence of the waltz
itself is united with the efforts of such vile demons of men as I have,
described, that two-thirds of the dancing-school girls are ruined.
It is a greater wonder that any of them escape. The question is often
asked: If what you say be true, why do not more of the dancing girls
become mothers? I will tell you why. It is because they dance away all
fear of maternity. It is the knowledge that the dancing floor _exercise_
will relieve if they get into trouble that makes many a woman bold
enough to take risks.
Dancing and drinking invariably go together. One rarely finds a dance
hall without a bar in it, or a saloon within a few steps of it, and
sooner or later those who dance will indulge in drink, which is the
devil's best agent in the carrying on of the vile business transacted
in, and in connection with, the dance hall.
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE BALL-ROOM TO THE GRAVE.
Let me tell you a true story which will illustrate this point.
It was a Saturday night in the month of December, in the year '91. The
girls who toil daily in the stores and shops on Spring street were
hastening to their homes after the long week of toil. As they pass along
we notice among them the tall, graceful figure of a young woman who
seems to be the favorite of the group of girls about her. She is a
handsome blonde of nineteen years, with a face as sweet and loving as
that of an angel.
She was born in a country town in New England, of respectable parents.
Her mother died while she was yet but a little girl, leaving her to the
care of a devoted father, who, with loving interest, reared and educated
her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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