only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one
try Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.
Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning
are absolutely one.

With no dancing evolutions, the author of this book
has chanted John Brown and King Solomon for the last two years
for many audiences. It took but a minute to teach the people the
responses. As a rule they had no advance notice they were going to sing.
The versifier sang the parts of the King and Queen in turn,
and found each audience perfectly willing to be the oxen, the
sweethearts, the swans, the sons, the shepherds, etc.

A year ago the writer had the honor of chanting for the Florence
Fleming Noyes school of dancers. In one short evening they made the
first section of the Congo into an incantation, the King Solomon into
an extraordinarily graceful series of tableaus, and the Potatoes'
Dance into a veritable whirlwind. Later came the more elaborately
prepared Chicago experiment.

In the King of Yellow Butterflies and the Potatoes' Dance Miss
Dougherty occupied the entire eye of the audience and interpreted,
while the versifier chanted the poems as a semi-invisible orchestra,
by the side of the curtain. For Aladdin and for King Solomon
Miss Dougherty and the writer divided the stage between them,
but the author was little more than the orchestra. The main intention
was carried out, which was to combine the work of the dancer
with the words of the production and the responses of the audience.

The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager. The Poem Game
idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs, its
further development to be on their own initiative. Informal parties
might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters. The whole
might be worked out in the spirit in which children play King William
was King James' Son, London Bridge, or As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.
And the author of this book would certainly welcome the tragic dance,
if Miss Dougherty will gather a company about her and go forward, using
any acceptable poems, new or old. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon is
perhaps the most literal and rhythmic example of the idea we have in
English, though it may not be available when tried out.

The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers, who would go a
longer way with the Poem Game idea, is to shake off the Isadora Duncan
and the Russ