Do you remember your first waltz with the lovely woman whom you had longed like a man but feared like a boy to touch—­even so much as the hem of her garment?  Can you recall the time, place and circumstance?  Has not the very first bar of the music that whirled you away been singing itself in your memory ever since?  Do you recall the face you then looked into, the eyes that seemed deeper than a mountain tarn, the figure that you clasped, the beating of the heart, the warm breath that mingled with your own?  Can you faintly, as in a dream—­blase old dancer that you are—­invoke a reminiscence of the delirium that stormed your soul, expelling the dull demon in possession?  Was it lust, as the Prudes aver—­the poor dear Prudes, with the feel of the cold wall familiar to the leathery backs of them?

It was the gratification—­the decent, honorable, legal gratification—­of the passion for rhythm; the unconditional surrender to the supreme law of periodicity, under conditions of exact observance by all external things.  The notes of the music repeat and supplement each other; the lights burn with answering flame at sequent distances; the walls, the windows, doors, mouldings, frescoes, iterate their lines, their levels, and panels, interminable of combination and similarity; the inlaid floor matches its angles, multiplies its figures, does over again at this point what it did at that; the groups of dancers deploy in couples, aggregate in groups, and again deploy, evoking endless resemblances.  And all this rhythm and recurrence, borne in upon the brain—­itself rhythmic—­through intermittent senses, is converted into motion, and the mind, yielding utterly to its environment, knows the happiness of faith, the ecstasy of compliance, the rapture of congruity.  And this the dull dunces—­the eyeless, earless, brainless and bloodless callosites of cavil—­are pleased to call lust!

O ye, who teach the ingenuous youth of nations
The Boston Dip, the German and the Glide,
I pray you guard them upon all occasions
From contact of the palpitating side;
Requiring that their virtuous gyrations
Shall interpose a space a furlong wide
Between the partners, lest their thoughts grow lewd—­
So shall we satisfy the exacting Prude.

—­Israfel Brown.

XII

OUR GRANDMOTHERS’ LEGS

It is depressing to realize how little most of us know of the dancing of our ancestors.  I would give value to behold the execution of a coranto and inspect the steps of a cinque-pace, having assurance that the performances assuming these names were veritably identical with their memorable originals.  We possess the means of verifying somewhat as to the nature of the minuet; but after what fashion did our revered grandfather do his rigadoon and his gavot?  What manner of thing was that pirouet in the deft execution of which he felt an honest exultation?  And what were the steps of his contra (or country) and Cossack dances?  What tune was that—­“The Devil amongst the Fiddlers”—­for which he clamored, to inspire his feats of leg?