The Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1893-1901, 1893-10-24
Correspondence
ON THE MIDWAY.
The Colonel Takes 1t in and Descant.
Upon its Moral Tendencies.

Ed. YELLOWSTONE JOURNAL:
When said would write you some
Worlds Fair correspondence. did not
know how difficult a contract | under
took to fulfill. The Fair is such a mon
| strous aggregation of everything con-
| ceivable, it is too much for me. l can't
grasp it. 1t is owe: whelming, crushing,
annihilating in it's immensity. Comtem-
| plating it, feel like microscopic ami.
malcule. Manufacturer delight not me.
but unlike Hamlet. man does; and
woman too. rush from the "cranks,"
mechanical and human, from those sad
and tired looking men and woman who
turn their holiday into an educational
torture and universal nightmare. and
fly to the much abused but most attrac-
| tive place to the American people after
all, the Midway PlaisaAce.
The Midway owes good deal of it's
attractiveness to the ferocioasly vir.
tuous old ladies and epicene old gentle
men who made its popularity by de-
| nouncing it. 1t looks almost as if it
were put up job between the social
| purity people and the fakirs. to boom
the thing by "indexing' it, The unco'
guild and rigidly righteous must have
very dirty minds. They are always nos
| ing for and seeing imaginary filth. How
did such pure people find out SO much
! filth in the world? BY theory or by
practice? \ reply would be interesting.
By writing and speechifylng, they have
found out filth for people who would
never have thought of finding it out for
themselves To the pure all things are
pure.
The objects to which curiosity has
been thus directed are the dancing girls
OF various Oriental nations: Turkish.
Algerian, Egyptian. Modesty in dress
or undress really seems to be a matter of
latitude of climate custom. The
Oriental woman would not bare her bos-
ON below the armpits as American and
English women -prudish enough in
other respects-do. nightly at balls Of
the best society. The Turkish dancing
girl does not display every line of her
form in gauzy tights as do the ladies Of
the ballet, every night upon the stage.
She is covered all over except her face.
Ample skirts reaching to the ground
cover her limbs, and there is no expos
ure of the person. The muscle dance,
the dams du rentre you can put it In
English If you think your delicate rea-
ders can stand it. though for the life of
me cannot see why the plain English
name could not be modestly applied to
a portion Of the human body which ma
ture did not consider herself immodest
in making. and which we cannot do
without-the muscle dance. is very little
of dance. 1t is a series OF contortions
of the lumbar and abdominal regions.
by no means very pleasing to witness,
in an esthetic point of view. The dan
Ger beats time to the orchestral accom-
paniment with her castanets; at inter
walls she varies her lateral squirms with
a double wriggle forward. and "down
comes the house." The Turks have got
ten ahead of their Algerian competitors
of late, for they have accentuated the
forward wriggle" by loud tap of the
drum; and this is all there is of it. 1t is
not seductive: it is unpleaslng and un-
graceful. the Orientals say they mean
no harm-nothing improper or immodest
it is danced in the theatres at Con
stantinople and they knew of nothing
wrong in it until the rigidly yirtuous
taught them otherwise. That they
have learned that there is money in the ex-
ploitation and accentution of it. is now
evident from the emahasis that is given to
the latter-day introduction of the drum.
beat. Now however. it has grown to be
a matter of convention that is naughty
and suggestiveness has been given to
it by the moral censors. which 1t is
claimed by the managers OF the dances,
was not originally intended.