The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1888-02-23
Sam Jones Denounces Dancing.

''Listen: When that girl began the
giddy whirl of the dance in the ball
room that was the time to get scared.
When you found your boy spending
more money than he ought, that was
the time to get shocked.
Sow cards and reap gamblers. |
know I'm called transcendentalist
and called Puritan, but God save my
family from cards and profanity, and
whisky and dances, and let the world
call me what it will.
Sow parlor dances and resp ball
rooms and reap round dances. Sow
round dances and reap dudes and
dudines. Sow dudes and dudines and
reap half a thimbleful of calves foot
jelly. applause and laughter re-
newed again and again.) wish you
wouldn't laugh any more to night, for
l never felt so solemn in my life. For
Gods sake hear me with a solemnity
and earnestness worthy of the cause.
But you say say so many funny
things. If you only knew Low many
l have to keep back you swOuidn't
blame me for the few which creep ont
Hear me, boys, girls, yonng ladies
of Kansas City! / used to dance. I've
danced many night with the girls of
my town. Hear me. If | was a fair
average dancing man, and / think
was. then no pure girl can go out en-
the floor and dance another set. "a
voice, 'Hurrah!) Young woman if
you could but follow the young mau.
after he has seen you home, to some
barroom or club and hear the discus
Sion of your form and person and
your virtue itself, you'd never lose
your respect and go on a ballroom
floor. (Sensation.) The dudes get
mad at me in some places and talk
about wanting to slap my jaws.
But say, to their credit, they know
better than to slap. I'm not afraid
to drop down into a hundred
acres of dudes and not a thing to fight
with and all of them armed with six
shooters. Uaughter.)
The tendency of the nineteenth
century is to dudeism. You dress
young buck out, part his hair in the
middle. put on an eyeglass, give him
pants which look as though his legs
had been melted and poured into EN-,
put on toothpick shoes, and every girl
in the town admires him. prolonged
merriment.) God help you, girls, I'd
rather see my daughter dead tonight
than sitting in a parlor talking to a
dude. (Applause) The good Bishop
of New York says the confessional
shows that nineteen out of twenty girls
meet their downfall in the ballroom.
''ln all my observation never knew
poor, ruined woman vino did not go
to ruin through the ballroom and the
theatre. A woman who has
lost her character has lost all, but the
boy is lionized by society. If there's
one deeper, blacker hell than another,
it's for the man who crushes purity
and virtue under his unhallowed feet
(Applause.) The only thing in the
world which deserves double-bar-
relied shotgun and load of buckshOt
is such man. =
"A round dance is an anteroom to
damnation. l never want to see the
arm of a lecherous man around the
waist of my wife OF daughter.
| ape no man. I'll be myself, be true
to myself, and true to truth. All |
want to do is to stand ON the barrel,
knock the bung out, and let nature
cut her capers. applause and laugh
ter.) | may be an idiot and fool,
but if I'm not an idiot and a fool, you'd
better think of these things"