the body bending backward and
forward and swaying laterally, the _figurante_ sometimes half-kneeling,
and in that position gracefully posturing, and again balanced on one
foot, the arms and hands waving slowly in time to the music. In another
dance, the _pirouette_ and other figures dear to the bald-headed beaux
of the modern play-house, were practiced in the familiar way. Four
thousand years ago, the senses of the young ancient Egyptian--wild,
heady lad!--were kicked into confusion by the dark-skinned belle of the
ballet, while senility, with dimmed eyes, rubbed its dry hands in
feverish approval at the self-same feat. Dear, dear, but it was a bad
world four thousand years ago!

Sometimes they danced in pairs, men with men and women with women,
indifferently, the latter arrangement seeming to us preferable by reason
of the women's conspicuously superior grace and almost equal agility;
for it is in evidence on the tombs that tumblers and acrobats were
commonly of the softer sex. Some of the attitudes were similar to those
which drew from Socrates the ungallant remark that women were capable of
learning anything which you will that they should know. The figures in
this _pas de deux_ appear frequently to have terminated in what
children, with their customary coarseness of speech, are pleased to call
"wringing the dish-clout"--clasping the hands, throwing the arms above
the head and turning rapidly, each as on a pivot, without loosing the
hands of the other, and resting again in position.

Sometimes, with no other music than the percussion of hands, a man would
execute a _pas seul_, which it is to be presumed he enjoyed. Again, with
a riper and better sense of musical methods, the performer accompanied
himself, or, as in this case it usually was, herself, on the
double-pipes, the guitar or the tambourine, while the familiar
hand-clapping was done by attendants. A step not unlike that of the
abominable clog dance of the "variety" stage and "music hall" of the
present day consisted in striking the heel of first one foot and then
the other, the hands and arms being employed to diminish the monotony of
the movement. For amusement and instruction of the vulgar, buffoons in
herds of ten or more in fested the streets, hopping and posing to the
sound of a drum.

As illustrating the versatility of the dance, its wide capacities of
adaptation to human emotional needs, I may mention here the procession
of women to the tomb of a fr