, that looked like the grin of a person in extreme
agony. I once caught sight of it in a glass, and have hardly ever smiled
since.

Most young men about London have gone through that strange secret ordeal
of the dancing-school. I am given to understand that young snobs from
attorneys' offices, banks, shops, and the like, make not the least
mystery of their proceedings in the saltatory line, but trip gayly, with
pumps in hand, to some dancing-place about Soho, waltz and quadrille it
with Miss Greengrocer or Miss Butcher, and fancy they have had rather
a pleasant evening. There is one house in Dover Street, where, behind
a dirty curtain, such figures may be seen hopping every night, to a
perpetual fiddling; and I have stood sometimes wondering in the street,
with about six blackguard boys wondering too, at the strange contortions
of the figures jumping up and down to the mysterious squeaking of the
kit. Have they no shame ces gens? are such degrading initiations to be
held in public? No, the snob may, but the man of refined mind never can
submit to show himself in public laboring at the apprenticeship of this
most absurd art. It is owing, perhaps, to this modesty, and the fact
that I had no sisters at home, that I have never thoroughly been able to
dance; for though I always arrive at the end of a quadrille (and
thank heaven for it too!) and though, I believe, I make no mistake in
particular, yet I solemnly confess I have never been able thoroughly
to comprehend the mysteries of it, or what I have been about from the
beginning to the end of the dance. I always look at the lady opposite,
and do as she does: if SHE did not know how to dance, par hasard, it
would be all up. But if they can't do anything else, women can dance:
let us give them that praise at least.

In London, then, for a considerable time, I used to get up at eight
o'clock in the morning, and pass an hour alone with Mr. Wilkinson, of
the Theatres Royal, in Golden Square;--an hour alone. It was "one, two,
three; one, two, three--now jump--right foot more out, Mr. Smith; and if
you COULD try and look a little more cheerful; your partner, sir, would
like you hall the better." Wilkinson called me Smith, for the fact is,
I did not tell him my real name, nor (thank heaven!) does he know it to
this day.

I never breathed a word of my doings to any soul among my friends; once
a pack of them met me in the strange neighborhood, when, I am ashamed to
say, I muttered