great agility.

Which, it appears, gained the attention of the company. And it well
might, for the year was 1830, and the mode of performing the cotillion
of the period was undergoing the metamorphosis of which the perfect
development has been familiar to ourselves. In its next stage the male
celebrant is represented to us as "hopping about with a face expressive
of intense solemnity, dancing as if a quadrille"--mark the newer
word--"were not a thing to be laughed at, but a severe trial to the
feelings." There is a smack of ancient history about this, too; it lurks
in the word "hopping." In the perfected development of this dance as
known to ourselves, no stress of caricature would describe the movement
as a hopping. But our grandfather not only hopped, he did more. He
sprang from the floor and quivered. In midair he crossed his feet twice
and even three times, before alighting. And our budding grandmother
beheld, and experienced flutterings of the bosom at his manly
achievements. Some memory of these feats survived in the performances of
the male ballet-dancers--a breed now happily extinct. A fine old
lady--she lives, aged eighty-two--showed me once the exercise of
"setting to your partner," performed in her youth; and truly it was
right marvelous. She literally bounced hither and thither, effecting a
twisting in and out of the feet, a patting and a flickering of the toes
incredibly intricate. For the celebration of these rites her partner
would array himself in morocco pumps with cunningly contrived buckles of
silver, silk stockings, salmon-colored silk breeches tied with abundance
of riband, exuberant frills, or "chitterlings," which puffed out at the
neck and bosom not unlike the wattles of a he-turkey; and under his
arms--as the fowl roasted might have carried its gizzard--our
grandfather pressed the flattened simulacrum of a cocked hat. At this
interval of time charity requires us to drop over the lady's own costume
a veil that, tried by our canons of propriety, it sadly needed. She was
young and thoughtless, the good grandmother; she was conscious of the
possession of charms and concealed them not.

To the setting of these costumes, manners and practices, there was
imported from Germany a dance called Waltz, which as I conceive, was the
first of our "round" dances. It was welcomed by most persons who could
dance, and by some superior souls who could not. Among the latter, the
late Lord Byron--whose participation