Something intenser and more truly living was taking the place
of the mere flutter and flash and grace of effect.
It was the figure in which the dancers form in facing columns, two and
two, the girls and the young men; when the "four hands round" keeps them
moving in bright circles all along the floor, and under arches of raised
and joined hands the girls came down, two and two, to the end, forming
their long line face to face against the opposing line of their
partners. The German may be, in many respects, an undesirable dance; it
may be, as I have sometimes thought, at least a selfish dance, affording
pleasure chiefly to the initiated few, and excluding gradually, almost
from society itself, those who do not participate in it. I speak of it
here neither to uphold nor to condemn,--simply because they _did_ dance
it at Outledge as they do everywhere, and I cannot tell my story without
it; but I think at this moment, when Sin Saxon led the figure with
Martha Josselyn, there was something lovely, not alone in its graceful
grouping, but in the very spirit and possibility of the thing that so
appeared.
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