bscurely conceivable to
any understanding not having the gift of maniacal inspiration, or the
normal advantage of original incapacity. Altogether, we may rightly
consider China the heaven appointed _habitat_ of people who dislike the
dance.

In Siam, what little is known of dancing is confined to the people of
Laos. The women are meek eyed, spiritless creatures, crushed under the
heavy domination of the stronger sex. Naturally, their music and dancing
are of a plaintive, almost doleful character, not without a certain
cloying sweetness, however. The dancing is as graceful as the pudgy
little bodies of the women are capable of achieving--a little more
pleasing than the capering of a butcher's block, but not quite so much
so as that of a wash tub. Its greatest merit is the steely rigor of its
decorum. The dancers, however, like ourselves, are a shade less
appallingly proper off the floor than on it.

In no part of the world, probably, is the condition of women more
consummately deplorable than in India, and, in consequence, nowhere than
in the dances of that country is manifested a more simple
unconsciousness or frank disregard of decency. As by nature, and
according to the light that is in him, the Hindu is indolent and
licentious, so, in accurately matching degree, are the dancing girls
innocent of morality, and uninfected with shame. It would be difficult,
more keenly to insult a respectable Hindu woman than to accuse her of
having danced, while the man who should affect the society of the
females justly so charged would incur the lasting detestation of his
race. The dancing girls are of two orders of infamy--those who serve in
the temples, and are hence called Devo Dasi, slaves of the gods, and the
Nautch girls, who dance in a secular sort for hire. Frequently a mother
will make a vow to dedicate her unborn babe, if it have the obedience to
be a girl, to the service of some particular god, in this way, and by
the daughters born to themselves, are the ranks of the Devo Dasi
recruited. The sons of these miserable creatures are taught to play upon
musical instruments for their mothers and sisters to dance by. As the
ordinary Hindu woman is careless about the exposure of her charms, so
these dancers take intelligent and mischievous advantage of the social
situation by immodestly concealing their own. The Devo Dasi actually go
to the length of wearing clothes! Each temple has a band of eight or ten
of these girls, who ce