Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. Always. When it is prosecuted
in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer
day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time.
The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the
salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl
that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in
through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the
whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this
most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very _pose_ of the dance is
profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate
emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and
justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of
unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly
assumed by people who have but a casual and partial
society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most
culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy.

That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does
not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A
good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as
you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not
cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.

There were, besides, peculiar _desagrements_ on this occasion. How can
people,--I could not help saying to myself,--how can people endure such
proximity in such a sweltering heat? For, as I said, there was no
illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and
Apollos. The boys were boys, appallingly young, full of healthful
promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at
ease in their situation,--indeed, very much _not_ at ease,--unmistakably
warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I
dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with
soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in
her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but Venus
herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as
they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,--puff-balls revolving
through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human
couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than
Spartan fortitu