The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8

dy-I make deduction of a few significant facts, to which facts of contrary significance seem exceptional. In the first place, it is to be noted that in countries where woman is conspicuously

he now familiar Can-Can of the Jardin Mabille-a dance the captivating naughtiness of which has given it wide currency in our generation, the successors to whose aged rakes and broken bawds it will fail to please and would probably make unhappy. Dances of this character, neither national, universal, nor enduring, have little value to the student of anything but anatomy and lingerie.

nt of her virtues to the loose exactions of his tolerance, or whether for ladies of indifferent modesty their lords will not make exertion-these are questions for the ethnologer. It concerns our purpose only to note that the male who sits cross-legged on a rug and permits his female to do the dancing for both gets

tion. Dances like those described (with, I hope a certain delicacy and reticence) are undoubtedly disturbing to the spectator. They have in that circumstance their raison d'être. As to that, then, there can be no two opinions. But observe the male oriental voluptuary does not himself dance. Why? Partly no doubt, because of his immortal indolence, but mainly, I venture to think, because he wishes to enjoy his reprehensible emotion, and this can not coexist with muscular activity If the reader-through either immunity from improper emotion or unfamiliarity with muscular activity-entertains a doubt of this, his family physician will be happy to remove it. No

r, by the way,

an adjacent room, the mothers perhaps a little jealous of the happy education of their daughters play at cards, in a third the fathers find the newspapers and talk politics. Between midnight and one o'clock all the family are reunited and have regained the paternal roof. The young girls learn to k

at a church sociable, but it is humbly conjectured that even the austere morality of a bald headed Prude might r