on
how to make a perfect time better. The ballroom is the most wonderful
stage-setting there is for the girl who is a ballroom success. And for
this, especial talents are needed just as they are for art or sport or any
other accomplishment.

The great ballroom success, first and foremost, dances well. Almost always
she is pretty. Beauty counts enormously at a ball. The girl who is
beautiful and dances well is, of course, the ideal ballroom belle.
But--this for encouragement--these qualities can in a measure at least be
acquired. All things being more or less equal, the girl who dances best
has the most partners. Let a daughter of Venus or the heiress of Midas
dance badly, and she might better stay at home.

To dance divinely is an immortal gift, but to dance well can (except in
obstinate cases, as the advertisements say) be taught. Let us suppose
therefore, that she dances well, that she has a certain degree of looks,
that she is fairly intelligent. The next most important thing, after
dancing well, is to be unafraid, and to look as though she were having a
good time. Conversational cleverness is of no account in a ballroom; some
of the greatest belles ever known have been as stupid as sheep, but they
have had happy dispositions and charming and un-self-conscious manners.
There is one thing every girl who would really be popular should learn, in
fact, she must learn--self-unconsciousness! The best advice might be to
follow somewhat the precepts of mental science and make herself believe
that a good time exists in her own mind. If she can become possessed with
the idea that she is having a good time and look as though she were, the
psychological effect is astonishing.

="CUTTING IN"=

When one of the "stags" standing in the doorway sees a girl dance past
whom he wants to dance with, he darts forward, lays his hand on the
shoulder of her partner, who relinquishes his place in favor of the
newcomer, and a third in turn does the same to him. Or, the one, who was
first dancing with her, may "cut in on" the partner who took her from him,
after she has danced once around the ballroom. This seemingly far from
polite maneuver, is considered correct behavior in best society in Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco, and
therefore most likely in all parts of America. (Not in London, nor on the
Continent.)

At dances organized during the War in the canteens for soldiers and
sailors on fu