. Your
future, and that of the hundreds of young pupils who favor us here
with their presence, may depend in large measure upon your energy and
studiousness while you are with us and under our tutelage. Let us help
you. Let me help you. It is my mission in life to direct folks
straight along the pleasant paths of health, beauty and financial
independence, and I feel sure I can be of aid to you and your future
if you will give me the opportunity to do so.

[Illustration: NW]

[Illustration: VIRGINIA BACON]

NED WAYBURN'S TOE DANCING

[Illustration]

All forms of modern toe dancing--and there are several--are based upon
the ballet technique, of which a synopsis of my own Americanized form
appears in a preceding chapter.

There is toe dancing of the really classical school in the perfected
ballet. That is the kind with which we are most familiar. When a
mother says, "I want my child to be taught toe dancing," she usually
expects to be understood as referring to the ballet in its entirety,
of which dancing on the toes seems symbolical.

But of later years there has developed in the terpsichorean art other
forms and combinations of toe dancing besides the strictly classical,
as for instance, the eccentric toe dance and the acrobatic toe dance.

As to the classical form, reference to the ballet chapter will find
its present development duly set forth.

The eccentric toe dance and its fellow, the acrobatic toe dance, both
have their beginnings in the fundamental ballet technique, in which
one must be well and properly schooled before expecting to succeed in
the more advanced work of these laterday favorites.

For they are favorites, as an hour at any modern playhouse where the
newer dances are featured, will demonstrate.

It is at the behest of the great American audience that these newer
toe dances are with us. You and the rest of the public that constitute
our audiences demand action, tricks--or at least tricky and novel
touches here and there--in your dancing entertainment. The old stuff
doesn't "get over" with you any more. So we invent new things that
present what you are bound to like, and the eccentric and acrobatic
toe dances are the result.

It may be jumping down a flight of steps on the toes, or a continued
hopping on one toe for 16 counts to music, or a swinging of one leg
back and forth, like a pendulum, in an acrobatic way while the dancer
hops on one toe--such stunts as these are the appl