e last champion performance is
that of a "professor of dancing" (Anglece, a dancing master), who
waltzed for five consecutive hours. It was an occasion. We are told
how, after waltzing some half-a-dozen persons, male and female, out of
breath, the "intrepid professor" kept on; how he changed partners
without stopping his regular steps; how he drank a glass of wine now
and then, while stepping in time to the music; and how, when after
waltzing steadily for four hours and a half, he showed some signs of
faltering, slices of lemon were put into his mouth, ten minutes after
swallowing which "the professor revived." Then he became dizzy, and
peppermint lozenges were given him. On he went, and in the last five
minutes of his stint showed his pluck by "putting in fancy steps"; and
his wife, who was now his partner--a sort of nursing partner, it would
seem--occasionally whispered "nods of encouragement," a performance
which beats the professor's all hollow. "Nods and becks and wreathed
smiles" are very natural and very charming on appropriate occasions;
but whispered nods are something quite inconceivable. The professor
held out, and at half-past twelve "a grand huzza rang out." Is not this
rather a pitiful spectacle? If a man dances, let him dance well. If to
teach dancing is his vocation, let him get, and let him prize, a
reputation for teaching it well. That is reasonable and respectable.
But that a man should spend five whole consecutive hours, nearly a
quarter of a day, in dancing for the mere sake of showing that he could
keep it up and dance ever so many people down, is rather a sad
exhibition of smallness. All these exhibitions spring, not from the
desire to do well, which is always and in all things honorable, but
from that of doing something that other people cannot do, which is not
very admirable. Some other "professor," not to be bluffed, will now
challenge this professor; and we shall have a dance for the
championship. Then some other professor in Europe will be fired with
ambition, and we shall have a grand International Dancing Contest for
the Championship of the World. Well, it will be a little better, but
not much, than the eating and drinking matches which sometimes take
place in England, in which two half-beastly creatures gorge and guzzle
in a contest wherein the victor would probably be beaten by almost any
four-legged swine. Emulation is a spur to exertion the moral excellence
of which is at least questiona