From the Ball-Room to Hell | Page 6

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 popular society gentlemen and ball-room devotees, and we hear him mutter to himself as he stares impudently at her pretty face: "Ah, my beauty, I shall locate your dwelling place later on. You are too fine a bird to be lost sight of."
He follows her to her lodging, and day by day studies her habits.
He discovers that she goes nowhere except to her daily toil and to church. He visits the church, and finding no opportunity to approach her there, is about to give up the chase when he finds out that