as a professor of
religion."

"She doesn't expect you to dance, Mrs. Andrews," said the lady.

"But she expects me to countenance the sin and folly by my
presence."

"Sin and folly are strong terms, Mrs. Andrews."

"I know they are, and I use them advisedly. I hold it a sin to
dance."

"I know wise and good people who hold a different opinion."

"Wise and good!" Mrs. Andrews spoke with strong disgust. "I wouldn't
give much for their wisdom and goodness--not I!"

"The true qualities of men and women are best seen at home. When
people go abroad, they generally change their attire--mental as well
as bodily. Now, I have seen the home-life of certain ladies, who do
not think it sin to dance, and it was full of the heart's warm
sunshine; and I have seen the home-life of certain ladies who hold
dancing to be sinful, and I have said to myself, half shudderingly:
"What child can breathe that atmosphere for years, and not grow up
with a clouded spirit, and a fountain of bitterness in the heart!"

"And so you mean to say," Mrs. Andrews spoke with some asperity of
manner, "that dancing makes people better?--Is, in fact, a means of
grace?"

"No. I say no such thing."

"Then what do you mean to say? I draw the only conclusion I can
make."

"One may grow better or worse from dancing," said the lady. "All
will depend on the spirit in which the recreation is indulged. In
itself the act is innocent."

Mrs. Andrews shook her head.

"In what does its sin consist?"

"It is an idle waste of time."

"Can you say nothing worse of it?"

"I could, but delicacy keeps me silent."

"Did you ever dance?"

"Me? What a question! No!"

"I have danced often. And, let me say, that your inference on the
score of indelicacy is altogether an assumption."

"Why everybody admits that."

"Not by any means."

"If the descriptions of some of the midnight balls and assemblies
that I have heard, of the waltzing, and all that, be true, then
nothing could be more indelicate,--nothing more injurious to the
young and innocent."

"All good things become evil in their perversions," said the lady.
"And I will readily agree with you, that dancing is perverted, and
its use, as a means of social recreation, most sadly changed into
what is injurious. The same may be said of church going."

"You shock me," said Mrs. Andrews. "Excuse me, but you are profane."

"I trust not. For true religion--for the holy things of the
church--I trust that