partner failed, from ignorance, lack of
skill or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasureable
sensations, I did not dance with him the second time.

"I am speaking openly and frankly, and when I say that I did not
understand what I felt, or what were the real and greatest
pleasures I derived from this so-called dancing, I expect to be
believed. But if my cheeks grew red with uncomprehended pleasure
then, they grow pale to-day with shame when I think of it all. It
was the physical emotions engendered by the magnetic contact of
strong men that I was enamored of--not of the dance, not even of
the men themselves.

"Thus I became abnormally developed in my lowest nature. I grew
bolder, and from being able to return shy glances at first, was
soon able to meet more daring ones, until the waltz became to me
and whomsoever danced with me, one lingering, sweet and purely
sensual pleasure, where heart beat against heart, hand was held in
hand and eyes looked burning words which lips dared not speak.

"All this time no one said to me, 'You do wrong;' so I dreamed of
sweet words whispered during the dance, and often felt, while
alone, a thrill of joy indescribable, yet overpowering, when my
mind would turn from my study to remember a piece of temerity of
unusual grandeur on the part of one or another of my cavaliers.

"Married now, with home and children around me, I can at least
thank God for the experience which will assuredly be the means of
preventing my little daughters from indulging in any such dangerous
pleasure. But if a young girl, pure and innocent in the beginning,
can be brought to feel what I have confessed to have felt, what
must be the experience of a married woman? She knows what every
glance of the eye, every bend of the head, every close clasp means,
and knowing that, reciprocates it, and is led by swifter steps and
a surer path down the dangerous, dishonorable road."

I read in the Scripture, in that ever memorable sermon on the Mount,
this significant declaration: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Some
may not receive this as sound doctrine, because it is the language of
Jesus Christ; but this will not give relief, because the _corrupting_
influence would be just the same if Christ h