ter detail stuck in my memory. It may or may not be true, but it
could have been, _should_ have been true. The incipient dancer keeping
her feet pure for her coming marriage with her art is a subject for
philosophic dissertation or for poetry. There are many poets who would
have seized on this idea for an ode or even a sonnet, had it occurred
to them. Oscar Wilde would have liked this excuse for a poem ... even
Robert Browning, who would have woven many moral strophes from this
text.... It would have furnished Mr. George Moore with material for
another story for the volume called "Celibates." Walter Pater might
have dived into some very beautiful, but very conscious, prose with
this theme as a spring-board. Huysmans would have found this
suggestion sufficient inspiration for a romance the length of
"Clarissa Harlowe." You will remember that the author of "En Route"
meditated writing a novel about a man who left his house to go to his
office. Perceiving that his shoes have not been polished he stops at a
boot-black's and during the operation he reviews his affairs. The
problem was to make 300 pages of this!... Lombroso would have added
the detail to his long catalogue in "The Man of Genius" as another
proof of the insanity of artists. Georges Feydeau would have found
therein enough matter for a three-act farce and d'Annunzio for a
poetic drama which he might have dedicated to "Isadora of the
beautiful feet." Sermons might be preached from the text and many
painters would touch the subject with reverence. Manet might have
painted Isadora with one of the carpet slippers half depending from a
bare, rosy-white foot.

There are many fables concerning the beginning of Isadora's career.
One has it that the original dance in bare feet was an accident....
Isadora was laving her feet in an upper chamber when her hostess
begged her to dance for her other guests. Just as she was she
descended and met with such approval that thenceforth her feet
remained bare. This is a pretty tale, but it has not the fine ring of
truth of the story of the carpet slippers. There had been bare-foot
dancers before Isadora; there had been, I venture to say, discinct
"Greek dancers." Isadora's contribution to her art is spiritual; it is
her feeling for the idea of the dance which isolates her from her
contemporaries. Many have overlooked this essential fact in attempting
to account for her obvious importance. Her imitators (and has any
other interpretat