DEAN’S STRANGE PREFERENCE.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 August 1919, Page 6

DEAN’S STRANGE PREFERENCE.

The Dean of Manchester believes in dancing as a means of leading the young in-to paths of reetitude_. He thinks dancing had a great deal to do with saving him from being a criminal, for which in his boyhood he had all the potentialities, he recently told a meeting of the Manchester recreative evening classes committee. The Dean continued: “Had I lived in a crowded COlll- - I have no doubt I should have fallen into the hands of the police. When I particularly Wanted to do something there was always an older person to dissuade me. “I believe in dancing as a «civilising agency, and one of the best metihods of d_evele'_pin‘g subnornla_l! Cllildl'oll- I Wes early C'Ol11pCll(3d to attend dancing lessons, but the stables had more attraction for me. My mother, liowever, insisted that I was not to be allowed to be brought up as a stable boy. “One of the peculiarities of the war was that the government sent out to the rest billets in France dancing mistresses to teach "the soldiers how to dance. It was taken’ up with the greatest spirit by officers and men alike, and had a beneficial.‘.eifec't. on their health.”