Page:Book of Etiquette, Volume 2, by Lilian Eichler.djvu/129

Rh these people. He told how they dressed in the brightest clothes they could obtain, for maddened with happiness as they were, they instinctively felt that bright clothes would enliven their spirits. And they did!

"The room was a mass of swirling, twirling figures," the biographer writes, "men, women and children in weird, vivid clothes. It seemed natural that they should be dancing so wildly in their wild costumes; in their sabots and aprons of two months ago they would not have been able to take one step."

It is, then, the spirit of clothes that imparts to one the spirit of the dance. We have mentioned these facts about the Reign of Terror to show what effect clothes do have on the spirit, and incidentally to show what the ballroom owes to dress. For it is undoubtedly the gayly-colored dance frock of the miss of the twentieth century, and the strikingly immaculate dance suit of her partner that gives to the ballroom to-day much of its splendid brilliance.

There can be no comparison between the mad dance of freed France and the simple, graceful dance of to-day. Yet we can see the effect of clothes in relation to both.

It is not often that dances are held in the afternoon, but when the occasion does arise, dress is just as gay and colorful as one can wear without being gaudy. The decorous effect of these bright-colored costumes is what brings the "giddy kaleidoscopic whirl of colors and costumes, modes and manners" that the historian speaks of when he mentions the ballroom.

For the afternoon dance, we would suggest that the