or the cough, keeps them away. I know dozens
of such young ladies; I have them as my pupils; my heart trembles for
them; they are just intoxicated with dancing; and they quote you, Ruth
Erskine, as an example when I try to talk with them; I have heard them.
Whether it is wrong for other people or not, as true as I sit here I can
tell you this: I have two girls in my class who are killing themselves
with this amusement, carried to its least damaging extreme, for they
still think they are very careful with whom they dance; and you are in a
measure, at least, responsible for their folly. You needn't say they are
simpletons; I think they are, but what of it? 'Shall the _weak_ brother
perish for whom Christ died?'"

"Nell made a remark that startled me a little, it was so queer." Eurie
said this after the startled hush that fell over them at the close of
Marion's eager sentence had in part subsided. "We were speaking of a
party where we had been one evening and some of the girls had danced
every set, till they were completely worn out. Some of them had been
dancing with rather questionable young men, too; for I shall have to own
that all the gentlemen who get admitted into fashionable parlors are not
angels by any means. I know there are several, who are supposed to be of
the first society, that father has forbidden me ever to dance with.

"We were talking about some of these, and about the extreme manner in
which the dancing was carried on, when Nell said: 'I'll tell you what,
Eurie, I hope my wife wasn't there to-night.' 'Dear me!' I said, 'I
didn't know she was in existence. Where do you keep her?' He was as
sober as a judge. 'She is on the earth somewhere, of course, if I am to
have her,' he said; 'and what I say is, I hope she wasn't there. If I
thought she was among those dancers, I would go and knock the fellow
down who insulted her by swinging her around in that fashion. I want my
wife's hand to be kept for me to hold; I don't thank anybody else for
doing that part for me.'"

"Precisely!" Marion said. "It is considered unladylike, I believe, for
people to talk about love and marriage. I never could see why; I'm sure
neither of them is wicked. But I suppose each of us occasionally thinks
of the possibility of having a friend as dear even as a husband. How
would you like it, girls, to have him spend his evenings dancing with
first one young lady and then another, offering them attentions that,
under any other circum