objected to, on the same ground as horse-racing, card-playing, and
theatrical entertainments; that we are to look at amusements as they
_are_, and not as they _might_ be. Horseraces might be so managed, as
not to involve cruelty, gambling, drunkenness, and every other vice. And
so might theatres and cards. And if serious and intelligent persons,
undertook to patronize these, in order to regulate them, perhaps they
would be somewhat raised from the depths, to which they are now sunk.
But such persons, know, that, with the weak sense of moral obligation
existing in the mass of society, and the imperfect ideas mankind have of
the proper use of amusements, and the little self-control, which men, or
women, or children, practise, these will not, in fact, be
thus-regulated. And they believe dancing to be liable to the same
objections.

As this recreation is actually conducted, it does not tend to produce
health of body or mind, but directly the contrary. If young and old went
out to dance together, in the open air, as the French peasants do, it
would be a very different sort of amusement, from that which is
witnessed, in a room, furnished with many lights, and filled with
guests, both expending the healthful part of the atmosphere, where the
young collect, in their tightest dresses, to protract, for several
hours, a kind of physical exertion, which is not habitual to them.
During this process, the blood is made to circulate more swiftly than
ordinary, in circumstances where it is less perfectly oxygenized than
health requires; the pores of the skin are excited by heat and
exercise; the stomach is loaded with indigestible articles, and the
quiet, needful to digestion, withheld; the diversion is protracted
beyond the usual hour for repose; and then, when the skin is made the
most highly susceptible to damps and miasms, the company pass from a
warm room to the cold night-air. It is probable, that no single
amusement can be pointed out, combining so many injurious particulars,
as this, which is so often defended as a healthful one. Even if parents,
who train their children to dance, can keep them from public balls,
(which is seldom the case,) dancing in private parlors is subject to
nearly all the same mischievous influences.

As to the claim of social benefits,--when a dancing-party occupies the
parlors, and the music begins, most of the conversation ceases; while
the young prepare themselves for future sickness, and the old lo