FAMILIAR FACES

The sagacious Solomon admitted that "there's a time to mourn" which passed with the funereal mid-years "and a time to dance." And yearly the Junior Dance Committee has passed favorably on this piece of philosophy. Tonight another unprovoked attack will be made on the staid venerability of that grand gallery of austere men who look down with monitorial visage from Memorial's walls. To be sure, Roosevelt and a few other liberals may approve, stirred with the memory of past days, but there will be others imbued with the spirit of Jonathan Edward who will dourly regard a youth "that gets together in conventions of both sexes for mirth and jollity which they call frolics; and who spend the greater part of the night in them."

There will be half-way gentlemen among that famous gallery of censors, neither affronted or approving, who will bethink them sadly of the beauty of "lost causes"--the minuet, quadrille, polka, and other dances once softened by a delicate formalism and ritualistic sobriety now in disuse. Even an early nineteenth century dance manual showed sings of a growing decadence, the passing of the classical restraint and solemnity of the dance of puritanical epochs. Couples were admonished above all things, thus implying that it was not the custom, "to wear a pleasing countenance; for dancing is certainly supposed to be an enjoyment. But the somber faces of some might lead to the belief that it were a solemn duty being performed." This, of course, is not the case. And while these level-headed gentlemen will by their enforced patronage give balance and dignity to the occasion, they will not utterly confound the mirthfully inclined for all their immitigable feature and respectable frames.