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The other dance-halls which I investigated held, I should say, a position mid-way between these two. Most of them were suburban, half-city, half-country in character, as also in the public they attracted. The modish clothes of city workmen and workwomen were interspersed among unpretending village costumes; the girls often wore their kerchiefs and gay-coloured aprons. The music, too, was more old fashioned, and the entrance fee lower, only twenty-five pfennigs, while the charge at the “Colosseum,” if I remember rightly, was fifty pfennigs. Of course, here as elsewhere, every dance called for another charge of ten pfennigs; it was easy to spend three or four marks in a single evening on dancing alone. The tone in these balls was rather freer than in the other; the dancers sang to the music, and their shouts and hurrahs resounded far beyond the room. Often the crowd was so dense and the heat so intolerable that every forehead was streaming with perspiration, and glass after glass was emptied. But then it was that the gaiety was at its height and the evening most successful. In these respects, but only in these respects, the better dancehalls were the more decently conducted. The jokes and laughter at single tables, among small knots of acquaintances, were all the noisier, the caresses and embraces in sly nooks and corners of the hall and balconies were all the more shameless. In one and the other were the same gay and glowing faces, often beautiful ones, the same brilliantly sparkling eyes, powerful figures, rounded youthful forms. In one and the other were unbridled merriment, increasing tumult, sensual excitement, which reached its climax and its abrupt arrest when, at the stroke of twelve, the music stopped, the hall was emptied, the lights extinguished. Then couple after couple would silently withdraw for a midnight stroll to the fields, where the stars are their only witnesses, or to sweetheart’s doorway, or straight to sweetheart’s chamber and bed. For, according to my observation, such is, if not the universal, at least the vastly more common ending to the Sunday dance. In these halls, in the nights from Sunday to Monday, our labouring youth is losing to-day not only its hard-earned wages, but its best strength, its ideals, its chastity. It is no wonder; the wonder would be if it were not so. Think for a moment what it is to spend the week, day after day, in the monotonous routine of the ugly factory, often at uninteresting work, in dirt and sweat, no comfortable resting-place at the noon hour, no resource at evening save the street before the door, the court-yard of the lodging-house or its small and crowded living-room with noise of children and smell of cookery; to spend the nights in wretched sleeping-quarters; to earn no more than enough for all daily needs; to be without oversight, without control, without parental care and love; in a word, without the blessed influence of family ties, with the vigour of youth in every limb, the ardency of youth in heart and head – and then think of the Sunday with its long hours of sleep and complete relaxation, with its freedom which no one curtails, and whose true use there is no one to teach; when the strains of music allure, fresh young faces laugh on every side, lights gleam, spacious and gaily decorated rooms with their arched and lofty ceilings offer a welcome! Here may be found amends for the hateful monotony of the week; here, in one evening, in one night, compensation hundred-fold for the hundred hideous impressions of all the rest. Is it strange then, that unrestrained as they are, these young people plunge into the splendid, maddening whirl, to glut their souls upon its delights, to lose the best of themselves within its vortex? I bring neither accusation nor excuse; I only present the facts in their nakedness, and show what needs must be their result.
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