From the Ball-Room to Hell | Page 6

execution of the waltz, is entirely unfit to make any man happy as his
wife, and if she be willing to indulge in such pleasures with every
ball-room libertine, she is not the woman any man wants for a wife. It
is a noticeable fact that a man who knows the ways of a ball-room
rarely seeks a wife there. When he wishes to marry he chooses for a
wife a woman who has not been fondled and embraced by every
dancing man in town.
It is also noticeable that after marriage few men care to dance, or to
have their wives dance.
The second reason why so many dancing girls are ruined is obvious,
when one considers how many fiends there are hanging about the
dancing schools and ball-rooms, for this purpose alone, some of them
for their own gratification, and others for the living there is to be made
from it. I am personally acquainted with men who are professional
seducers, and who are to-day making a living in just this way. They are
fine looking, good conversationalists and elegant dancers. They buy
their admittance to the select (?) dancing school by paying an extra fee,
and know just what snares to lay and what arts to practice upon the
innocent girls they meet there to induce them to yield to their diabolical
solicitations, and after having satisfied their own desires and ruined the
girls they entice them to the brothel where they receive a certain sum of
money from the landlady, rated according to their beauty and form.
Can you wonder when the degrading, lust-creating influence of the
waltz itself is united with the efforts of such vile demons of men as I
have, described, that two-thirds of the dancing-school girls are ruined.
It is a greater wonder that any of them escape. The question is often
asked: If what you say be true, why do not more of the dancing girls
become mothers? I will tell you why. It is because they dance away all
fear of maternity. It is the knowledge that the dancing floor exercise
will relieve if they get into trouble that makes many a woman bold

enough to take risks.
Dancing and drinking invariably go together. One rarely finds a dance
hall without a bar in it, or a saloon within a few steps of it, and sooner
or later those who dance will indulge in drink, which is the devil's best
agent in the carrying on of the vile business transacted in, and in
connection with, the dance hall.
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE BALL-ROOM TO THE GRAVE.
Let me tell you a true story which will illustrate this point.
It was a Saturday night in the month of December, in the year '91. The
girls who toil daily in the stores and shops on Spring street were
hastening to their homes after the long week of toil. As they pass along
we notice among them the tall, graceful figure of a young woman who
seems to be the favorite of the group of girls about her. She is a
handsome blonde of nineteen years, with a face as sweet and loving as
that of an angel.
She was born in a country town in New England, of respectable parents.
Her mother died while she was yet but a little girl, leaving her to the
care of a devoted father, who, with loving interest, reared and educated
her.
After the completion of her education she entered a printing office, to
serve an apprenticeship, but the close confinement, following, as it did,
in close proximity to the confinement of the school room, soon
undermined her health and a change of climate was prescribed. The
father felt he could not part from her even for a few months, but as it
seemed for her good, he reluctantly consented to her going to Los
Angeles, the "City of the Angels," for a year.
It was a sad day for both when that father and his only daughter parted.
Little could he know of the fate that was in store for his pure and loving
child in the far West. Little did he think when she kissed him an

affectionate farewell, and told him she would return in just one year,
that he would never see her smiling face again. Nor did she dream that
she was journeying to her doom; that far beyond the mountains she
should be laid to rest 'neath the sod of mother earth.
But to return to the scene on Spring street.
As the little group pass up the street her very beautiful face does not
escape the notice of the crowd of idlers gathered on the corners gazing
impudently at the passers by.
Among these idlers is one of the city's most