lebrate their saltatory rites morning and evening.
Advancing at the head of the religious procession, they move themselves
in an easy and graceful manner, with gradual transition to a more
sensuous and voluptuous motion, suiting their action to the religious
frame of mind of the devout until their well-rounded limbs and lithe
figures express a degree of piety consonant with the purpose of the
particular occasion. They attend all public ceremonies and festivals,
executing their audacious dances impartially for gods and men.

The Nautch girls are purchased in infancy, and as carefully trained in
their wordly way as the Devo Dasi for the diviner function, being about
equally depraved. All the large cities contain full sets of these girls,
with attendant musicians, ready for hire at festivals of any kind, and
by leaving orders parties are served at their residences with fidelity
and dispatch. Commonly they dance two at a time, but frequently some
wealthy gentleman will secure the services of a hundred or more to
assist him through the day without resorting to questionable expedients
of time-killing. Their dances require strict attention, from the
circumstance that their feet--like those of the immortal equestrienne of
Banbury Cross--are hung with small bells, which must be made to sound in
concert with the notes of the musicians. In attitude and gesture they
are almost as bad as their pious sisters of the temples. The endeavor is
to express the passions of love, hope, jealousy, despair, etc, and they
eke out this mimicry with chanted songs in every way worthy of the
movements of which they are the explanatory notes. These are the only
women in Hindustan whom it is thought worth while to teach to read and
write. If they would but make as noble use of their intellectual as they
do of their physical education, they might perhaps produce books as
moral as _The Dance of Death_.

In Persia and Asia Minor, the dances and dancers are nearly alike. In
both countries the Georgian and Circassian slaves who have been taught
the art of pleasing, are bought by the wealthy for their amusement and
that of their wives and concubines. Some of the performances are pure in
motive and modest in execution, but most of them are interesting
otherwise. The beautiful young Circassian slave, clad in loose robes of
diaphanous texture, takes position, castanets in hand, on a square rug,
and to the music of a kind of violin goes through the figures of h