A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

the stomach is loaded with indigestible articles, and the quiet, needful to digestion, withheld; the diversion is protracted beyond the usual hour for repose; and then, when the skin is made the most highly susceptible to damps and miasms, the company pass from a warm room to the cold night-air. It is probable, that no single amusement can be pointed out, combining so many injurious particulars, as this, which is so often defended as a healthful one. Even if parents, who train their children to dance, can keep them from public balls, (which is seldom the case,) dancing in private parlors is subject to nearly all the same mischievous influences. As to the claim of social benefits,--when a dancing-party occupies the parlors, and the music begins, most of the conversation ceases; while the young prepare themselves for future sickness, and the old look smilingly on. As to the claim for ease and grace of manners,--all that is gained, by this practice, can be better secured, by Calisthenics, which, in all its parts, embraces a much more perfect system, both of healthful exercise, graceful movement, and pleasing carriage. The writer was once inclined to the common opinion, that dancing was harmless, and might be properly regulated; and she allowed a fair trial to be made, under her auspices, by its advocates. The result was, a full conviction, that it secured no good effect, which could not be better gained another way; that it involved the most pernicious evils to health, character, and happiness; and that those parents were wise, who brought up their children with the full understanding that they were neither to learn nor to practise the art. In the fifteen years, during which she has had the care of young ladies, she has never known any case, where learning this art, and following the amusement, did not have a bad effect, either on the habits, the intellect, the feelings, or the health. Those young ladies, who are brought up with less exciting recreations, are uniformly likely to be the most contented and most useful, while those, who enter the