ame back to me the
Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet
bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.

Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the
green. Youth and gayety and beauty--and in summer we are all young and
gay and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and
velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and
Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy
summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil
their faces there.

Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming
exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of
drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous
movements, the fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of
lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,--the sublime, the
evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, without aim, except its own
overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it
reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which
has been or may be free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two
Sticks." In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character
of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an
angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the
"full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the
"Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,--which is all I allege
against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding,
swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute
angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements
are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly
outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than this
dancing, well portrayed in the contraband melody of

"Old Joe," etc.

The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine
absence of drapery reveals processes and thereby destroys results.

Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a
country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of
concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry
young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a
dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad,
a sturdy old farm