Ambrose Bierce - Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce

PREFACE .

The writer of these pages is not foolish enough to suppose that he can escape strong and bitter condemnation for his utterances. On this score he is not disposed to be greatly troubled; and for these reasons: Firstly he feels that he is performing a duty; secondly he is certain that his sentiments will be endorsed by hundreds upon whose opinion he sets great value; thirdly he relieves his mind of a burden that has oppressed it for many years; and fourthly as is evident upon the face of these pages he is no professed litterateur , who can be starved by adverse criticism. Nevertheless he would be apostate to his self-appointed mission if he invited censure by unseemly defiance of those who must read and pass judgment upon his work. While, therefore, he does not desire to invoke the leniency of the professional critic or the casual reader, he does desire to justify the position he has taken as far as may be consistent with good taste.

It will doubtless be asserted by many: That the writer is a bigoted parson, whose puritanical and illiberal ideas concerning matters of which he has no personal experience belong to an age that is happily passed. On the contrary, he is a man of the world, who has mixed much in society both in the old world and the new, and who knows whereof he affirms.

That he is, for some reason, unable to partake of the amusement he condemns, and is therefore jealous of those more fortunate than himself. Wrong again. He has drunk deeply of the cup he warns others to avoid; and has better opportunities than the generality of men to continue the draught if he found it to his taste.

That he publishes from motives of private malice. Private malice no. Malice of a certain kind, yes. Malice against those who should know better than to abuse the rights of hospitality by making a bawdy-house of their hosts dwelling.

But the principal objection will doubtless refer to the plain language used.

My excuse, if indeed excuse be needed for saying just what I mean, is, that it is impossible to clothe in delicate terms the intolerable nastiness which I expose, and at the same time to press the truth home to those who are most in need of it; I might as well talk to the winds as veil my ideas in sweet phrases when addressing people who it seems cannot descry the presence of corruption until it is held in all its putridity under their very nostrils.

Finally, concerning the prudence and advisability of such a publication, I have only to say that I have consulted many leading divines and principals of educational institutions, all of whom agree that the subject must be dealt with plainly, and assure me that its importance demands more than ordinary treatment that it is a foeman worthy of the sharpest steel; for, say they: To repeat the tame generalities uttered from the pulpit, or the quiet tone of disapprobation adopted by the press, would be to accord to the advocates of this evil a power which they do not possess, and to proclaim a weakness of its opponents which the facts will not justify.

I have therefore spoken plainly and to the purpose, that those who run or waltz may read.

But there remains yet something to be said, which is more necessary to my own peace of mind, and to that of many of my readers, than all that has gone before. So important is it, indeed, that what I am about to say should be distinctly understood by all those whose criticism I value, and whose feelings I respect, that I almost hesitate t6 consign it to that limbo of egotism the preface.

Be it known, then, that although in the following pages I have, without compunction, attacked the folly and vice of those who practice such, yet I would rather my right hand should wither than that the pen it wields should inflict a single wound upon one innocent person. I am willing to believe, nay, I know , that there are many men and women who can and do dance without an impure thought or action; for theirs is not the Dance of Death; they can take a reasonable pleasure in one anothers society without wishing to be locked in one anothers embrace; they can rest content with such graces as true refinement teaches them are modest, without leaping the bounds of decorum to indulge in what a false and fatal refinement styles the poetry of motion; in short, to them the waltz, in its newest phases at least, is a stranger. I would not, like Lycurgus and Mahomet, cut down all the vines, and forbid the drinking of wine, because it makes some men drunk. Dancers of this class, therefore, I implore not to regard the ensuing chapters as referring to themselves the cap does not fit their heads, let them not attempt to wear it. The same remarks will apply to some of those heads of families who permit and encourage dancing at their homes. Many among them doubtless exercise a surveillance too strict to admit of anything improper taking place within their doors; these stand in no need of either advice or warning from me. But more of them, I am grieved to say, are merely blameless because they are ignorant of what really does take place. The social maelstrom whirls nightly in their drawing-rooms; with their wealth, hospitality, and countenance they unconsciously, but none the less surely, lure the fairest ships of life into its mad waters. Let these also, then, not be offended that in this book I raise a beacon over the dark vortex, within whose treacherous embrace so many sweet young souls have been whirled to perdition.