er
dance, her whiteness giving her an added indelicacy which the European
spectator misses in the capering of her berry brown sisters in sin of
other climes.

The dance of the Georgian is more spirited. Her dress is a brief skirt
reaching barely to the knees and a low cut chemise. In her night black
hair is wreathed a bright red scarf or string of pearls. The music, at
first low and slow increases by degrees in rapidity and volume, then
falls away almost to silence, again swells and quickens and so
alternates, the motions of the dancer's willowy and obedient figure
accurately according now seeming to swim languidly, and anon her little
feet having their will of her, and fluttering in midair like a couple of
birds. She is an engaging creature, her ways are ways of pleasantness,
but whether all her paths are peace depends somewhat, it is reasonable
to conjecture, upon the circumspection of her daily walk and
conversation when relegated to the custody of her master's wives.

In some parts of Persia the dancing of boys appareled as women is held
in high favor, but exactly what wholesome human sentiment it addresses I
am not prepared to say.

VIII

IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CRUCIBLE

From the rapid and imperfect review of certain characteristic oriental
dances in the chapters immediately preceding--or rather from the studies
some of whose minor results those chapters embody--I make deduction of a
few significant facts, to which facts of contrary significance seem
exceptional. In the first place, it is to be noted that in countries
where woman is conspicuously degraded the dance is correspondingly
depraved. By "the dance," I mean, of course, those characteristic and
typical performances which have permanent place in the social life of
the people. Amongst all nations the dance exists in certain loose and
unrecognized forms, which are the outgrowth of the moment--creatures of
caprice, posing and pranking their brief and inglorious season, to be
superseded by some newer favorite, born of some newer accident or fancy.
A fair type of these ephemeral dances--the comets of the saltatory
system--in so far as they can have a type, is the now familiar _Can-Can_
of the Jardin Mabille--a dance the captivating naughtiness of which has
given it wide currency in our generation, the successors to whose aged
rakes and broken bawds it will fail to please and would probably make
unhappy. Dances of this character, neither national, univ