how long will it take before we are threatened by the dance at the breakfast coffee? We have spoken of three mental effects: the license, the eroticism, and the imitativeness which are stirred up by the dancing movements. But in the perspective of history we ought not to overlook another significant trait: the overemphasis on dancing has usually characterized a period of political reaction, of indifference to public life, of social stagnation and carelessness. When the volcanoes were rumbling, the masses were always dancing. At all times when tyrants wanted to divert the attention of the crowd, they gave the dances to their people. A nation which dances cannot think, but lives from hour to hour. The less political maturity, the more happiness does a national community show in its dancing pleasures. The Spaniards and the Polish, the Hungarians and the Bohemians, have always been the great dancers—the Gypsies dance. There is no fear that the New Yorkers will suddenly stop reading their newspapers and voting at the primaries; they will not become Spaniards. But an element of this psychological effect of carelessness and recklessness and stagnation may influence them after all, and may shade the papers which they read, and even the primaries at which they do vote. Yet how one-sided would it be, if we gave attention only to the dangers which the dance may bring to a nation's mind. The credit account of the social dance is certainly not insignificant, and perhaps momentous just for the Americans of to-day. The dance is a wonderful discharge of stirred up energy; its rhythmic form relieves the tension of the motor apparatus and produces a feeling of personal comfort. The power to do this is a valuable asset, when so much emotional poverty is around us. The dance makes life smooth in the midst of hardship and drudgery. For the dancer the cup is always overflowing, even though it may be small. There is an element of relaxation and of joyfulness in the rhythm of the music and the twinkling of the feet, which comes as a blessing into the dulness and monotony of life. The overworked factory girl does not seek rest for her muscles after the day of labour, but craves to go on contrasting them in the rhythmic movements of the dance. So it has been at all times. The hardest worked part of the community has usually been the most devoted to the gayety of popular dances. The refined society has in many periods of civilization declined to indulge in dancing, because it was too widely spread among the lowest working classes in towns and in the country. The dance through thousands of years has been the bearer of harmless happiness: who would refuse a welcome to such a benefactor? And with the joyfulness comes the sociability. The dance brings people near together. It is unfair to claim that the dance is aristocratic, because it presupposes leisure and luxury. On the contrary, throughout the history of civilization the dance has