“In those times I cared little for polka or varsovienne, and still less for ‘Money Musk’ or ‘Virginia Reel,’ and wondered what people could find to admire in these slow dances.  But in the soft floating of the waltz I found a strange pleasure, rather difficult to intelligibly describe.  The mere anticipation fluttered my pulse, and when my partner approached to claim my promised hand for the dance, I felt my cheeks glow a little sometimes, and I could not look him in the eye with the same frank gayety as heretofore.

“But the climax of my confusion was reached when, folded in his warm embrace, and giddy with the whirl, a strange, sweet thrill would shake me from head to foot, leaving me weak and almost powerless, and really obliged to depend for support on the arm which encircled me.  If my partner failed, from ignorance, lack of skill or innocence, to arouse these, to me, most pleasureable sensations, I did not dance with him the second time.

“I am speaking openly and frankly, and when I say that I did not understand what I felt, or what were the real and greatest pleasures I derived from this so-called dancing, I expect to be believed.  But if my cheeks grew red with uncomprehended pleasure then, they grow pale to-day with shame when I think of it all.  It was the physical emotions engendered by the magnetic contact of strong men that I was enamored of—­not of the dance, not even of the men themselves.

“Thus I became abnormally developed in my lowest nature.  I grew bolder, and from being able to return shy glances at first, was soon able to meet more daring ones, until the waltz became to me and whomsoever danced with me, one lingering, sweet and purely sensual pleasure, where heart beat against heart, hand was held in hand and eyes looked burning words which lips dared not speak.

“All this time no one said to me, ‘You do wrong;’ so I dreamed of sweet words whispered during the dance, and often felt, while alone, a thrill of joy indescribable, yet overpowering, when my mind would turn from my study to remember a piece of temerity of unusual grandeur on the part of one or another of my cavaliers.

“Married now, with home and children around me, I can at least thank God for the experience which will assuredly be the means of preventing my little daughters from indulging in any such dangerous pleasure.  But if a young girl, pure and innocent in the beginning, can be brought to feel what I have confessed to have felt, what must be the experience of a married woman?  She knows what every glance of the eye, every bend of the head, every close clasp means, and knowing that, reciprocates it, and is led by swifter steps and a surer path down the dangerous, dishonorable road.”

I read in the Scripture, in that ever memorable sermon on the Mount, this significant declaration:  “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed