tners to be exactly in time both with one another and
the music, and a partner who can only dance the old _deux temps_, or
whose _trois temps_ step is faulty, is not very likely, if a man, to be
favored with many "rounds," or if a lady to be asked for them.

As for the talk of ball-rooms, its silliness and inanity are almost
proverbial. And yet what else can one expect? In the "squares" one's
attention is so constantly called off to some process of bowing, or
setting, or crossing over, or turning round, that it is next to
impossible to get half a dozen consecutive sentences of conversation at
a time. Indeed, I have often meditated making a fortune by publishing,
for the use of men whose small talk is limited, a pocket _Dancers
Conversation Book_, to consist wholly of three-word beginnings of
sentences, such as "Don't you think--," "Have you seen--," "Do you
know--," and so on. The reader would be instructed, every time he found
himself at rest beside his partner, to start one of these fragments,
with a pleasant smile and an interrogative air, in well-founded
confidence that by the time the third word was out of his mouth some
exigency of the figure would require him to turn off to some independent
movement on his own part, which ended, his partner might safely be
assumed to have forgotten all about his last remark, and to be ready to
listen to another equally illusory. But even supposing a couple have
comparatively time to talk--as, for instance, during the short interval
between two dances--how, if (as must continually happen) they were utter
strangers to one another till ten minutes ago--how, I say, can they be
expected to get beyond the veriest outworks and superficialities of
conversation? The man (with whom it lies to take the lead) may possibly
have a host of interests, and be able to talk sensibly or speciously on
a variety of subjects, but at the start he is quite in the dark as to
his partner's tastes and pursuits, and so almost perforce breaks ground
with first one, and if that fails another, of the ordinary small-talk
questions, on the chance of lighting upon some topic that the lady knows
or cares about. There is always a hope of turning up trumps. "Have you
been to the opera lately?" may discover an ardent musician, and pave
the way for a long "sit-out" gossip on things musical. "Have you been in
town long?" may lead to any amount of pleasantly rambling talk about
places and people in the counties, or recoll