But it is the question relating to your idea of “the greatest earthly happiness” that struck me most.  “Never being called in the morning,” was one lazy person’s reply.  “To write M.P. after my name,” was the ambition of another.  “Married life,” wrote the bride on the completion of her honeymoon.  Ah, little bride, you have been married some years now.  Are your ideas still the same, I wonder?  “A good partner, a good floor, and good music,” said a fourth, and it is this one that has my entire sympathy.  I agree with her.  It is my idea also of “the greatest earthly happiness.”  I do not require much, you see.  These are not very difficult things to procure now-a-days; and yet I am often taunted with my love of dancing.  If I express disapproval of a man, “I suppose he can’t dance,” they say with a sneer.

Now though that accomplishment is a necessity in a ball-room, I do not consider it indispensable in a husband.  Unfortunately you cannot dance through life.  I wish you could for many reasons.  A continual change of partners, for instance, would it not be refreshing?  You would scarcely have time to grow tired of them.  And how much more polite our husbands would be if they thought we were only fleeting joys!  What am I saying?  I am shocking everyone I am afraid; the little matron who advocates married life, the newly-made brides whose ideal men are realized in their husbands—­I am shocking them all!  I humbly plead forgiveness.  You see, I am not married myself.  I can only give my impressions as a looker-on, and, as Thackeray says, “One is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking.”

But dancing is indispensable in a ball-room.  If a man cannot dance he should stay away, and not make an object of himself.  Unfortunately, so many think they excel in the art when they have not the least idea of it.  Again, with girls, dancing (in a ball-room only, of course) comes before charm of manner, before wit, even before beauty.  I know girls, absolutely plain, with not a word to say for themselves, who dance every dance, while the walls of the room are lined with pretty faces, and dismal-looking enough they are too, which is very foolish of them.  They should have too much pride to show their discomfiture.

Men have so much the best of it at dances—­so everybody says.  I am afraid I do not agree.  I would not change our positions for anything.  After all, a girl can nearly always dance with anyone she likes, and pick and choose as well as the men—­provided, of course, that she is an adept on the “light fantastic toe” herself.

And think, on the other hand, what men go through!  Reverse the order of things, as you are supposed to do at leap year dances—­which system, however, is never properly carried out.  But suppose you go up to a man and ask him for a dance, and he tells you with a smile that “he is very sorry, but really he has not one left.”  Suppose that the next minute you see him give three to another girl, would you speak to that man ever again? Never! And yet this is what they constantly endure and, what is more, forgive.