Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1918 — Tripping the Light Fantastic Is Called “Hugging Set to Music” [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Tripping the Light Fantastic Is Called “Hugging Set to Music”

By BILLY SUNDAY

Dances are simply hugging set to music. Cards are the tools of the gamblers—the only thing more crooked is horseracing. Not all theater plays are immoral, but the few exceptions only prove the danger of most of them. • If the dance is only a matter of exercise and grace and makes no appeal to the passions, try to have the ’ men dance together, and the women dance together. I It would kill the dance in two weeks. | Card playing and dancing are greater enemies to the spiritual life of the church than the saloon. Not

that they are worse than the saloon, but they, damage the spiritual life of the church more. Ido not condemn the theater as an institution. It has noble people in it, like Maude Adams, the late Joe Jefferson, David Warfield and others, but it is run for the purpose of amusement and not for instruction. When it presents a story of a harlot, why that story is told to entertain the people in the audience, not to elevate their souls. It is not-to point out the pitfalls for the unwary feet. As for drinking, that gang is not satisfied with damaging our men and debauching our boys, but the dirty, stinking whisky business is damning and debauching our women. A few years ago you couldn’t find a decent woman drinking or smoking—now go around to our hotels! It is estimated that there are some five hundred thousand falle:i women in this country. Of that number 375,000 attribute their fall 4a a result of the dance.