RAG-TIME IN CHURCH.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 31, 5 February 1913, Page 8

RAG-TIME IN CHURCH.

MINISTER’S DENUNCIATION. trmsn Since the Rev. nenry Ward Beecher, to illustrate the evils of slavery, took a black girl into his pupil, and offered her for sale by auction, then has been (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) r.c such clerical melodrama in Amend' as it was enacted in Minneapolis when two chorus girls danced rag time/ dances on the platform of tin pulpi' of the Rev. O. L. Morrill, illustrating his sermon on “Praise Him with the Dance.” Most amazing dances were put 01 the boards by the chorus girls, and the congregation fairly gasped. Nc matter how brazen, the dance was performed—the “turkey trot,” ttif “crab crawl,” the “tortoise tango,’ the “jelly wobble,” the “angle-worm wiggle,” the “grizzly,” the “seasick glide,” the “Boston dip,” and various other forms of terpsichorean mon strosity, some of which are still popular here. Then began Mr Morrill’s sermon which was a long, fervent tirade against rag-time dances of to-day-dances, he said, that would make tin devil blush, and which would hardh be tolerated in hell. Mr Morrill ask ed for legislation to fight the terp sichorean evils, which, he said, ori ginated in low resorts on the Bar bary coast, and were now sweeping like a. plague over Christendom. “The animal world is libelled,” he declared. “Mr Bear and Mrs Tur key were never guilty of such antics, and doubtless look with surprise and shame at the dances which bear theii name. Why, even when one goef down the street one can almost tel the youths and maidens who attem dances, where these rag-times art popular. Their walk is a.mixture ol slide and wiggle, and it is shameful You may think that as long as thesi Barbary coast dances are done among good people, they are right, but thru have brought damnation to many, and the music that causes all these contortions is among the greatest existing evils. As "the chorus girls gyrated, nov. and then a coin was flipped toward? the pulpit, while the big organ of the church pealed forth rag-time music to accompany the dances.