The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-02-26

hfty times over before her turn comes.
Some dozen years ago, enterprising
Science bottled, when at its vilest,
specimens of the strff inhaled by at
tendants upon winter performances in
various metropolitan theatle s, and re-
ported the analyses of the same to a
sickening public. What denominations
are kept in deadly evolution by the
heaviDg contents of the assembly room,
stout-stomached Science may hesitate
to ask, or to disclose. The thermom-
CLAD teauties will take cold before
dancing begins. To cool of after each
set, they promenade in the same foul
atmosphere, a fearful aggregate of
barred Quare inches filed with damp
and gaping pores whose province is
alternate absorption and exhalation.
| The lungs ache in their unyieldlng
sheath. but everybody pants after
dancing, and twenty sets do not in
| volve as much physical exertion as q
brisk constitutional" of three miles,
or horseback excursion of ten.
The fair reveller could walk dozen
| miles in the open air, and ride all day
| on country roads without the waste of
vital forces which she leaves behind her
and nobody else finds-in the ball
room. Ozone feeds life: nitrogen. effete
animal tissue. flying particles of dye
stuffs, silica. powder, silk, cotton, wool,
| volatile perfumes, the breath of with
ering flowers-all the deleterious sub
stances science knows, and many of
| which even science dare not dream,
sap the springs of the most robust con-
stitution.
These are the risks taken by the
healthy girl who goes, night after
night, to hop, reception, and germaI {:
printing herself for each succeeding
draught upon the reserves of nature
qy hours Of unsatisfactory daylight
slumber and toners" of Liebig and
peplonoids. If only sound, we'll wo-
men lived thus, season by season, the
evil would be so mOnstrou1 as to Call
for legislation to abate it. But what
woman is always so completely at her
best as to be able to endure the stress Of
hours of standing and dancing and
cooling off" in the atmosphere we
have denoted?
"Girls will go, if they die for it - sigh
mothers and physicians We know in
what form" they come out in the
spring; how Catholic. Episcopalian,
and Presbyterian agree in hailing
Lenten season tina, rings lull in the
breatbless race of pc. Ire.
Up to comparative.s recent date
broad line of demarcation could be laid
between square End round dances.
Now, the girl who does not waltz, does
not dance. The dizZying whlrl has
insinuated itself into every description
OF the amusement, quadrllle, cotillon.
and Lanciers; fastened like piece OF
new cloth on an old garment-upon the
Virginia reel itself. 1 saw q minuet
danced the other night, careful re-
production of the stately movement of
a 100 years agone, and the "reproduc-
ton" wound up-in q double sense
with a tearing waltz.
The craze fer the may measure
esteemed indecorous when Byron. a
leader in the school Of lax morality,
wrote,
what you've touched, you may take
Pretty Walter, adieu"
is the most remarkable because so few
people waltz well. For one who spins
and Skins like dragon-hy, fifty blum
der like blind beetles. Furthermore,
there are men who are not awkward or
ignorant with whom modest gils can
not endure to waltz. There is as much
OCbnCCh VIC ICSpCClul Sup-
port of the true gentleman, and the
clasp of him who has delicacy neither
IN soul nor body, as between snow and
mud. know the social crde of the ball
room affirms that there are clever and |
available devices by which partners can
be selected according to merit and pre-
ference. Girls will bear me witness |
how often undesirable ones are forced |
upon them. Were l, veteran |
looker.on, to recount few of the scenes !
that prove my position, c0ntre-teanps |
TO one sex and annoying to /
the other, occurring at watering-plsces,
public balls, and private drawing
ooms, I should horrify some readers
and make enemies of others.
Pass we then to positive and ten
able objection to the fashion of making
dancing the only amusement in COM
panies of young people of both sexes,
Our young men and women are
losing the art of conversation. Their
conception of social intercourse is
limited to gatherings where the, Ike
the floor within ten minutes after en-
tering the parlors, and leave it at
O'Clock am. for the dresSing-rOom.
Talk, there is, in half minutes allowed |
by the figures OF the set, but of the |
most trivial sort, anG so disjointed that |
it is worse than none. There can be no |
exchange of ideas. and, with seven out |
of ten who will tell you they are lust |
devoted to dancing" there are not |
enough ideas to GO around were they set |
ia circulation. Your thoroughbred |
society girl" mopes if deprived of her
chief resource; VIC ties intellectual con-
versation, too slow for anything" and !
counts time, not, like Festus, "by great |
thoughts" but by germans.
Mrs. Petroleum, who mistakes her
educated daughters desire for "a
Recamler salon" tor desire to have
saloon, and guesses "Pa has money
enough to set up one if they're getting
to be the fashion," is hardly more
ignorant of the elevating influence OF
association with refined people whose
mental riches grow with the expendi
ture, than arc Adolphus and Adelina,
bobbing like painted corks on the
frothiest of fashionable society, with
atrophied minds and haltitg tongues,
conscious of, and caring for no higher
life.
CoALTER & SNFLGRovE. the Salt Lake
music dealers. Weber pianos.