While he spoke, which was for an hour or more, the bebadged and beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion; their faces—­or such parts of their faces as were visible above the whiskerline—­flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation.  I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them—­that part of it appeals to so many.

After that the tango seemed literally to trail us.  We could not escape it.  While we were in Berlin the emperor saw fit officially to forbid the dancing of the tango by officers of his navy and army.  We reached England just after the vogue for tango teas started.

Naturally we went to one of these affairs.  It took place at a theater.  Such is the English way of interpreting the poetry of motion—­to hire some one else to do it for you, and—­in order to get the worth of your money—­sit and swizzle tea while the paid performer is doing it.  At the tango tea we patronized the tea was up to standard, but the dancing of the box-ankled professionals was a disappointment.  Beforehand I had been told that the scene on the stage would be a veritable picture.  And so it was—­Rosa Bonheur’s Horse Fair.

As a matter of fact the best dancer I saw in Europe was a performing trick pony in a winter circus in Berlin.  I also remember with distinctness of detail a chorusman who took part in a new Lehar opera, there in Berlin.  I do not remember him for his dancing, because he was no clumsier of foot than his compatriots in the chorus rank and file; or for his singing, since I could not pick his voice out from the combined voices of the others.  I remember him because be wore spectacles—­not a monocle nor yet a pair of nose-glasses, but heavy-rimmed, double-lensed German spectacles with gold bows extending up behind his ears like the roots of an old-fashioned wisdom tooth.

Come to think about it, I know of no reason why a chorusman should not wear spectacles if he needs them in his business or if he thinks they will add to his native beauty; but the spectacle of that bolster-built youth, dressed now as a Spanish cavalier and now as a Venetian gondolier, prancing about, with his spectacles goggling owlishly out at the audience, and once in a while, when a gleam from the footlights caught on them, turning to two red-hot disks set in the middle of his face, was a thing that is going to linger in my memory when a lot of more important matters are entirely forgotten.