BALLS AND SUNDAY-SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 4665, 26 October 1876, Page 3

BALLS AND SUNDAY-SCHOOLS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I do not - wish to encumber your columns with a controversy regarding "souldestroying amusements," and had the writer of the letter on the above subject confined himself to the general question I should certainly not have troubled you with comments. I might have concluded that some Sunday-school teachers had been taking to heart lluskin's admonition that they ought to vary the practice hitherto prevalent of teaching the children catechism and them-selves-danciug, by learning catechism thcmselviß and giving the children their turn of the other study, advice which I think most valuable, and which I commend to Sunday-school teachers, especially in bush districts, where the conditions of life are so apt to foster in our race coarse minds and boorish manners. But this individual, under cover of a saintly protest against profanation by which his pure soul is vexed, makes a venomous attack on private persons, who, however, stand in no need of defence against such an assailant, even were the statement trne, which we are asked to accept on the authority of this apocryphal " Stranger lad.'' I believe, sir, that betting is considered a " soul destroying amusement," consequently I never bet (unless I am certain to win), but I venture on this occasion, Mr. Editor, to bet you a new hat that this would-be-holy sneak is some drunken old loafer to whom slandering, lying, and P.B. are sweet as mother's milk. Are you on ? I hand you my card. Perhaps with the aid of the " Stranger Lad" my initials will suffice for "Traveller."—lam, &c., J. M. [Not on.—Ed.] TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Seeing remarks made by a correspondent signing himself '' A Traveller" relative to dancing, wherein he says, " dancing is a fascinating, soul-destroying amusement," and further, his quotation from an eminent divine, "dancing is fraught with danger, dissipating the mind, and unfitting the soul for serious thoughts." The above remarks are an intemperate exaggeration. Do we not see in the midst of our good and true families dancing allowed? Although not a dancer myself I thoroughly sympathize and appreciate seeing the young enjoy any pleasure or racreation which always does them good, both mentally and physically. Are our good children to abstain from taking a couple of hours' pleasant and graceful recreation because dancing is abused ? We might abstain for the 3ame reaßon from eating and drinking, because a vast proportion of cur fellow creatures make gluttony and intoxication an abomination. Certainly those who are temperate in all things prove a stronger and more enduring morality than those who abstain merely. Only those should abstain when they cannot control that which is deleterious to their constitution jor their morals. There is a religious dissipation which is as pernicious in its results as any other kind of abuse. The question to decide is, which of the two sets the better example, temperance or abstinenoe ? Let the young enjoy themselves. Here comes in the essential aid of the queens of the " child kingdom," viz., mothers, and J fully endorse a sentiment which I heard remarked, that good mothers were the basis of civilization. It is equally necessary for the mother to cull out wholesome, and to apportion the kind I and quantity of recreation for her children, as to «ee that they get wholesome and pro- . perly cooked food, and when they get beyond the mother's "apron strings ' they will not, abuse what they, learnt to use and eujoyowhen young-. : Train- np a child in the way he should-go and when he is old ho will not from it." The capacity for merriment and' gladness is a precious gift,- and a< proof-.of . sanity and Mothers should , cultivate' and T cxercise thjs capaoity.; A good play on the.; piano or a good dance ■•yviU not unfrequently take trie place of a good cry and dispel a 'host i of ill-

Humours. It haa often been stated that dancin K induces dissipation, would it not be better to state the true case and say that dissipated people prostitute dancing.—l am &< ?i J . c* a™. JanikPlox.