Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/82

60 lips, the literal pearls of speech. We questioned Daniel closely to know if these really were the picked dancers, the flower of Chidambram's beauties; if he had never seen them dance in voluminous, diaphanous, graceful native dress?

"No, your ladyship. These are their richest clothings. You see the magnificent velvets of their costumes. They never wear the common sari now that they have these. It is always this splendid dress they wear for the dancing when I bring European visitors."

The dance went on, a tame and tedious cake-walk, purely callisthenic school-girl exercise to the end, save in one or two less shuffling measures where they made undeniable eyes at us, posed one finger against the cheek, and looked unutterable archness. "Notice the postures, see the sentiments of the countenance," said Daniel, who was a connoisseur in such dances, and gifted with the second sight needed to make anything at all fascinating out of the languid measures. "It is praise of the goddess," said the old gentleman, rapturously, delighted with the spectacle. But such a dreary ballet! Such a monotonous walk-around to minor airs thumped and blown by the earnest temple musicians, and plaintive choruses wailed by the dancers themselves, would never fill a theater nor a side-show in the West, and the would have closed for lack of patronage had its Oriental dances been like this.

The sun struggled through the clouds and sent shafts and ladders of gold down from the high windows, that, touching the white draperies of the seated