—From “Nimble Feet, or Nimble Minds?” an editorial from the January 14, 1905, issue of The Saturday Evening Post
There is a reason for the present limiting of dancing to the very young. It has gone the way of all the other pastimes that used to be eagerly pursued by people with poorly developed minds and meager supplies of mental food. People danced because they had little to think about and nothing to talk about. So, when they got together socially, they danced — and drank.
Now that railway, telegraph, and printing press have roused all but the most sluggish, even in the out-of-the-way corners, the older people talk or do other things which give employment to the brain; and only those near to the purely animal existence of childhood dance.
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