 | Eli Perkins (at large) |  |
THE DANCING MANIA.
If you see a two-hundred pound
man and woman perspiring around
with their pompous bodies tossing
lightly and springily in the air, arms
swaying — keeping good time, and
making grand Persian salaams for a
bow in the Lancers, you can set
them down as belonging to the old
Tweed-Fisk-Leland-Americus Club
school.
If you see two heated young people tripping fast
away ahead of the music, taking short steps, and jerking
through a square dance as if the house was on
fire and the set must be completed before any could
take to the fire-escapes, you can set them down as from
the plantation districts of the South, or the rural districts
of Pennsylvania and the West. It is the Mississippi
River steamboat quickstep.
If you see a black-eyed youth with long hair and a
young lady with liquid black eyes, and she has her two
hands on the young man's shoulders at full length, and
stands directly in front of him, and they both go hopping
around like Siamese twins with wire springs under
them, you can wager they are from Louisville, Memphis,
step.
If you see a young fellow grasp a young lady firmly
around the waist, seize her wrists, stick her hand out
like the bowsprit of a Sound yacht, and both hump up
their backs like a pair of mad cats on a door-yard fence,
and then go sliding slam bang against people, over
people, through people, up and down the room, sideways,
backwards, and up and down like a saw-mill gate,
you can be sure they are directly from Chicago, or from
the region of Milwaukee or Detroit.
If you see a couple gliding gently, slowly, and lazily
through the Lancers—just half as fast as the time, but
keeping step with the music—quietly sauntering through
the “Grand Chain,” too languid to whirl partners, talking
sweetly all the time, as if they were strolling in a
graveyard, you can rest assured that they are from New
York, and from the most fashionable section between
Madison Square and the Park. This is the churchyard-saunter
step.
If you see a fellow clasp a girl meltingly in his arms,
squeeze her hand warmly, hold her swelling breast to
his, and they both go floating down the room locked in
each other's embrace, looking like one person, his feet
only now and then protruding from a profusion of illusion
and lace and so on, rely upon it you can set the
two down as belonging to the intense Boston school.
It is the melting Harvard College embrace.
Massachusetts, take our hat!
| Eli Perkins (at large) | |