This is perpetually the fact; and it is the danger and the shame of the round dances. Young girls guarded, from babyhood, from all contact with vice, from all knowledge of men as they exist, in their own world of clubs and dissipation, suddenly “come out” to whirl, night after night, and week after week, in the arms of men whose lightest touch is profanation. It would be long before it would dawn upon the girl to dream of the evil in that man’s heart; far longer to learn the evil of his life; yet no less, to her, innocent and young, in the very association and contact there is unconscious pollution. There is a sacredness in the very thought of the body which God created to be the human home of an immortal soul. Its very beauty should be the seal of its holiness. Every where in Scripture its sacredness is recognized and enforced. Therein we are told that our bodies are the temples of God. We are commanded to make them meet temples for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and our very dress, in its harmony and purity, should consecrate, not desecrate, the beautiful home of the soul. CHAPTER XXVII. INAUGURATION DAY AT WASHINGTON. My Own Private Opinion—Sublime Humanity in the Lump—The Climate Disagrees—The Little “Sons of War” Feeling Bad—“Think of the Babies”—Brutal Mothers—The “Boys in Blue”—“Broke their Backs and Skinned their Noses”—Our Heroes—Later Festivities—“Devoted to Art”—Scene in “the Avenue”—A Lively Time—The Mighty Drum-Major—West Point Warriors Criticised—Faultlessly Ridiculous—Pitilessly Dressed—“Taken for a Nigger”—Magnificent Display—The Oldest Regiment in the States—The President—The Senators—Invitation of the Coldstream Guards—The Strangers—Generals Sherman and Sheridan—Admiral Porter—Sketches of Well-known Men—The Diplomatic Corps—Blacque Bey—Full Turkish Costume—Sir Edward Thornton—The Japanese Minister—Senator Sumner Appears—The Supreme Court—Senator Wilson—Cragin, Logan, and Bayard—Vice-President Colfax—Enter, the President—Congress Alive Again—The Valedictory—Taking the Oaths—“The Little Gentleman in the Big Chair”—His Little Speech—His Wife and Family Behind—The New President—Memories of Another Scene—Grand Jubilation—The Procession—The Curtain Falls. I don’t like Inauguration day, but I hope you do, or will, when I have told you what a gala day it is to many—to all who stay at home, and catch the splendor which it sheds, through lines of printer’s ink.