lady at a distance, and sometimes stooping and flourishing with his legs as he went along:  when he approached her, he made a sort of salaam, and then retreated.  Another would go softly up to a lady, and then suddenly seizing her by the waist, would turn and twist her round and round some fifty times till both were evidently giddy with the motion:  this was sometimes performed by a few chosen dancers, and sometimes by several hundreds at once—­all embracing each other in what, to our notions, would seem rather an odd sort of way, and whirling round and round; and though their feet appeared constantly coming in contact with each other, a collision never took place.  And those who met in this affectionate manner were, as I was told, for the most part perfect strangers to each other, which to me was incomprehensible!  Several ladies asked me to dance with them, but I excused myself by saying that their dancing was so superlatively beautiful that it was sufficient to admire it, and that I was afraid to try—­’besides,’ said I, ’it is contrary to our customs in Hindustan.’  To which they replied that India was far off, and no one could see me.  ‘But,’ said I ’there are people who put every thing in the newspapers, and if my friends heard of it I should lose caste.’  The ladies smiled; and after this I was not asked to dance.”  The Persian princes, when in a similar dilemma, evaded the request by “taking oath that we did not know how, and that our mother did not care to teach us; and thank God,” concludes Najef-Kooli with heartfelt gratitude, “we never did dance.  God protect the faithful from it!” Independent of the above recorded opinions on the singularity of quadrilles and waltzes, the khan takes this occasion to enter into a disquisition on the inconsistency (doubly incongruous to an Oriental eye) of the ladies having their necks, arms, and shoulders uncovered, while the men are clothed up to the chin, “and not even their hands are allowed to be seen bare,” and returned from the ball, no doubt, more lost than ever in wonder at the strange extravagances of the Feringhis.

These opinions are repeated, shortly after, on the occasion of the Khan’s being present at an evening party at Clapham, which, as the invitation was for the country, he seems to have expected to find quite a different sort of affair from the entertainments at which he had already assisted in London.  He was greatly surprised, therefore, to find the assemblage, on his arrival, engaged in the everlasting toil of dancing, “the men, as usual in this country, clad all in dismal black, and the ladies sparkling in handsome costumes of bright and variegated colours—­another singular custom, of which I never could learn or guess the reason.”  But, however great a bore the sight of quadrilles may have been to the khan, ample amends were made to him on this occasion by the musical performances, with which several of the ladies ("though they all at first refused, evidently from modesty”) gratified the company in the intervals