Crossing from Japan to China, the Prude will find a condition of things which, for iron severity of morals, is perhaps unparalleled—­no dancing whatever, by either profligate or virtuous women.  To whatever original cause we may attribute this peculiarity, it seems eternal, for the women of the upper classes have an ineradicable habit of so mutilating their feet that even the polite and comparatively harmless accomplishment of walking is beyond their power, those of the lower orders have not sense enough to dance, and that men should dance alone is a proposition of such free and forthright idiocy as to be but obscurely 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