Page:Modern Dancing (1914) Castle.djvu/31

Rh and modestly. I may be a very gullible person, but I have talked to hundreds of girls about their dancing, and they have put into my hand the golden key to the situation by saying with a puzzled smile and questioning eye: "We're dancing wrong? Well, maybe; but we don't know any other way to dance. Do you?"

We do, and we can teach them. That is really the situation in a nutshell. They must dance. The lure of the rhythm, the sense of flinging aside the weariness of the working-day, is as strong in the heart of the girl behind the counter as in that of the girl in the private ball-room. The man who labors in the humbler callings is as interested in his girl friend and as anxious to dance with her as the young man in what we call "society." And what is more, I do not and will not believe that all those young persons, the fathers and mothers of to-morrow, who are working and striving to earn honest livings and to rise in the world connect their moments of recreation with suggestive ideas and unworthy ideals.

To them dancing means a stretching of the mental muscles as well as those which are physical. It means something different from the dull daily round; it is almost as natural as the desire for food and sleep. The forbidding of the modern dances in public centers is dangerous. It sets that