mother, who has herself perhaps been a dancing-girl in her time,
she begins the severe course of gymnastics and muscle training which
are the foundations of all Eastern dances. From infancy until, not yet
in her teens, she becomes a member of the village ballet or enters the
harem of a local rajah, she is as assiduously trained and groomed as a
race-horse entered for the Derby. From morning until night, day after
day, year after year, the muscles of her shoulders, her back, her hips,
her legs, her abdomen are suppled and developed until they will respond
to her wishes as readily as her slender, henna-stained fingers.

The lawn on which the dances were held sloped down, like a great green
rug, from the squat white residency to an ancient Hindu temple, whose
walls, of red-brown sandstone, were transformed by the setting sun into
rosy coral. The Bali temples are but open courtyards enclosed within
high walls, their entrances flanked by towering gate-posts, grotesquely
carved. Within the courtyards, which have arrangements for the
cremation of the dead as well as for the refreshment of the living, are
numerous roofed platforms and small, elevated shrines, reached by steep
flights of narrow steps, every square inch being covered with intricate
and fantastic carvings. These carvings are for the most part
beautifully colored, so that, when illuminated by the sun, they look
like those porcelain bas-reliefs which one buys in Florence, or, if the
colors are undimmed by age, like Persian enamel. In some of the temples
which I visited, the colorings had been ruthlessly obliterated by coats
of whitewash, but in those communities where Hinduism is still a
living force, the inhabitants frequently impoverish themselves in
order to provide the gold-leaf with which the interiors of the shrines
are covered, just as the congregations of American churches praise God
with carven pulpits and windows of stained glass.

* * * * *

The stage setting for the dances consisted of a small, portable pagoda,
heavily gilded and set with mirrors--nothing more, unless you include
the backdrop provided by the Indian Ocean. On either side of the
pagoda, which was set in the centre of the lawn, squatted a motionless
native holding a long-handled parasol of gold, known as a _payong_. So
far as I could discover, the purpose of these parasol holders was
purely ornamental, like the palms that flank a concert stage, for they
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