"Undeniable," Eurie said again. "Yet I don't see what that proves. There
are lengths to which you can carry almost any amusement. The point is,
we don't carry them to any such lengths."

"That isn't the whole point, Eurie. There are many amusements which no
one carries to improper lengths. We do not hear of their being so
perverted; but we do not hear of them in the ball-room. The question is,
has dancing such a tendency? Do impure people have dance-houses which it
is a shame for a person to enter? Are young men and young women, our
brothers and sisters led astray in them? We mustn't be too delicate to
speak on these things, for they exist; and they are found among people
for whom the Lord died, and many of them will be reclaimed and be in
heaven with us. They are our brethren; _can_ they be led away by the
influences of the dance? If we are all really in earnest in this matter,
will you each give your opinion on this one point?"

"I suppose it is unquestionable," Ruth said, "that dance-houses are in
existence, and that they are patronized by the lowest and vilest of
human beings; but the sort of dance indulged in has no more likeness to
the dances of cultivated society than--"

"Than the drunkard lying in the gutter bears likeness to the elegant
young man of fashion who takes his social sips from a silver goblet
lined with gold at his mother's refreshment table," Marion said,
interrupting her, and speaking with energy. "Yet you will admit that the
one may be, and awfully often is, the stepping stone to the other."

"It is true," Eurie said; "both are true. I never thought of it before,
but there is no denying it."

As for Flossy, she simply bowed her head, as one interested but not
excited.

"Then may I bring in one of my verses, 'Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widow
in their affliction, and to keep himself _unspotted_ from the world.'
Does that apply? If the world can carry this amusement to such depths of
degradation, and if the elegant parlor dance is or _can_ be in the
remotest degree the first step thereto, _are_ we keeping ourselves
unspotted if we have anything to do with it, countenance it in any way?
Don't you see that the question, after all, is the same in many respects
as the card-playing one? We have been over this ground before.

"Suppose we grant, for argument's sake, that not one of you is in danger
of being led away to any sort of