cise, go out into the damp night air, in a thin dress,
contract consumption; and both sexes are very much exposed, in this
way, to colds, rheumatisms, and fevers.

But the great danger, after all, is to reputation and morals. Think of
a group of one hundred young ladies and gentlemen assembling at
evening, and under cover of the darkness, joining in conclave, and
heating themselves with exercise and refreshments of an exciting
nature, such as coffee, tea, wine, &c, and in some parts of our country
with diluted distilled spirit; and 'keeping up the steam,' as it is
sometimes called, till twelve or one o'clock, and frequently during the
greater part of the night. For what kind and degree of _vice_, do not
such scenes prepare those who are concerned in them?

Nothing which is here said is intended to be levelled against dancing,
in itself considered; but only against such a use, or rather _abuse_ of
it as is made to inflame and feed impure imaginations and bad passions.
On the subject of dancing as an amusement, I have already spoken in
another part of the work.

I have often wondered why the strange opinion has come to prevail,
especially among the industrious yeomanry of the interior of our
country, that it is economical to turn night into day, in this manner.
Because they cannot very well spare their sons or apprentices in the
daytime, as they suppose, they suffer them to go abroad in the evening,
and perhaps to be out all night, when it may justly be questioned
whether the loss of energy which they sustain does not result in a loss
of effort during one or two subsequent days, at least equal to the
waste of a whole afternoon. I am fully convinced, on my own part, that
he who should give up to his son or hired laborer an afternoon, would
actually lose a less amount of labor, taking the week together, than he
who should only give up for this purpose the hours which nature
intended should be spent in sleep.

But--I repeat it--the moral evil outweighs all other considerations. It
needs not an experience of thirty years, nor even of twenty, to
convince even a careless observer that no small number of our youth of
both sexes, have, through the influence of late evening parties, gone
down to the chambers of drunkenness and debauchery; and, with the young
man mentioned by Solomon, descended through them to those of death and
hell.

It may be worth while for those sober minded and, otherwise, judicious
Christians, who are