to the middle of the thigh; her
scrap of a bodice, cut far below the shoulder blades at the back, being
absolutely sleeveless, is precariously held in place by a string or two
of beads. To be sure, she is apt to wear a collar of blazing diamonds,
instead of the simple band of black velvet that used to be sufficient
ornament for the peerless Bonfanti and the beautiful and modest Betty
Rigl, who in their graceful ignorance of "splits" and athletic "tours de
force," managed in their voluminous and knee-long skirts to whirl, to
glide, to poise and float, to show, in fact, the poetry of motion.

But we, this untrained ballet, were not Bonfantis nor Morlachis, and we
wore our dancing clothes with a difference. In one dance we were supposed
to be fairies. We wore flesh-colored slippers and tights. It took one
full week of our two weeks' engagement to learn how to secure these
treacherous articles, so that they would remain smooth and not wrinkle
down somewhere or twist about. One girl never learned, and to the last
added to the happiness of the public by ambling about on a pair of legs
that looked as if they had been done up in curl papers the night before.

We each had seven white tarlatan skirts, as full as they could be
gathered--long enough to come a little below the knee. Our waists were
also flesh-colored, and were cut fully two or three inches below our
collar-bones, so you see there was plenty of cloth at our backs to hook
our very immature wings to. We had wreaths of white roses on our
heads--Blanche, who was very frank, said they looked like wreaths of
turnips--and garlands of white roses to wave in the dance. I remember the
girl with the curled legs was loathed by all because she lassoed everyone
she came near with her garland--so you see we were very decorous fairies,
whether we were decorative or not.

Of course we were rather substantial, and our wings did seem too thin and
small to sustain us satisfactorily. One girl took hers off in the
dressing-room and remarked contemptuously that "they couldn't lift her
cat even!"

But another, who was dictatorial and also of a suspicious nature,
answered savagely: "You don't know nothing about wings--and you haven't
got no cat, nohow, and you know it--so shut up!" and the conversation
closed.

In our second costume we were frankly human. We still wore dancing
skirts, but we were in colors, and we had, of course, shed our
wings--nasty, scratchy things they were, I remem