When we reach the year 1910 [Harding dreamt he was reading in the Weekly Review for 1952], we find the art of dancing well on its way toward establishing itself as the predominant mode of expression. The next few years marked a tremendous advance. The graceful danseuses who interpreted Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, and Shakespeare's "Tempest" were the pioneers of a vast movement. We can do nothing better than recall a few typical public performances given in New York during the season of 1912-13.

In a splendid series of matinÉes extending over two months, Professor William P. Jones danced the whole of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The first two volumes were danced in slow time, to the accompaniment of two flutes and a lyre. The poses were statuesque rather than graceful, and the gestures had in them a great deal of the antique. But, beginning with the story of the barbarian invasions in the third volume, Professor Jones's interpretation took on a fury that was almost bacchantic. The sack of Rome by the Vandals in the year 451 was pictured in a veritable tempest of gyrations, leaps, and somersaults. The subtle and hidden meanings of the text called for all the resources of the Professor's eloquent legs, arms, shoulders, lips, and eyes. A certain obscure passage in the life of Attila the Hun, which had long been a puzzle to students of Gibbon, was for the first time made clear to the average man when Professor Jones, standing on one foot, whirled around rapidly in one direction for five minutes, and then, instantly reversing himself, spun around for ten minutes in the opposite direction.

In the ballroom of the Hotel Taftoftia, during Christmas week, William K. Spriggs, Ph.D., held a number of fashionable audiences spellbound with his marvellously lucid dances in Euclid and Algebra up to Quadratics. Perhaps the very acme of the Terpsichorean art was attained in the masterly fluency of body and limbs with which Mr. Spriggs demonstrated that the sum of the angles in any triangle is equal to two right angles. In Pittsburg Mr. Spriggs is said to have moved an audience to tears when, by an original combination of the Virginia reel, the two-step, and the Navajo snake dance, he showed that if x² + y² = 25 and x² - y² = 25, x equals 5 and y equals zero. All the pride and selfishness of x, all the despair of y, were mirrored in the dancer's play of features. The spectators could not help pondering over the seeming law of injustice that rules the world. Why should x be everything in the equations and y nothing? Why should y's nonentity be used even to set off the all importance of x? But they found no answer. On the other hand, a large number of college freshmen who had failed on their entrance mathematics found no difficulty in passing off their conditions after attending three performances of Mr. Spriggs's dance.

We can give only the briefest mention to an entire school of experts and scientists who helped to make the season of 1912-13 memorable in the annals of the greatest of all arts. For a solitary illustration we may take Mr. Boom, who, at the annual meeting of the American ZoÖlogical Association, danced his monumental two-volume work entitled, "The Variations of the Alimentary Canal in the Frogs and Toads." This dance was subsequently repeated before several crowned heads of Europe.

An event of more than ordinary interest was the debate between Senators Green and Hammond on the question whether the United States should establish a protectorate over Central America. Senator Green danced for the affirmative and Senator Hammond danced for the negative. Both gentlemen had an international reputation. Senator Green's war-dance in the Senate on the Standard Oil Company is still spoken of in Washington as the most striking rough-and-tumble exhibition of recent years. Senator Hammond is an exponent of a style which lays greater stress on finesse than on vigour. In a single session of the Senate he is said to have sidestepped nearly a dozen troublesome roll-calls without arousing any appreciable dissatisfaction among his constituents. Before a popular jury, however, Senator Green's Cossack methods were likely to carry greater conviction. And that is what happened in the great debate we have referred to. Senator Hammond appeared on the platform in a filmy costume made up of alternate strips of the Constitution of the United States and the Monroe Doctrine. Wit, sarcasm, irony followed one another in quick succession over his mobile features and fairly oozed from his fingers and toes. Yet it was evident that while he could appeal to the minds of the spectators he had no power to sway their emotions. It was different with Senator Green. A thunderous volume of applause went up the moment he appeared on the stage, booted and spurred and heavily swathed in American flags. His triumph was a foregone conclusion. The scene that ensued when Senator Green concluded his argument by leaping right over the table and pouring himself out a glass of ice-water on the way, simply beggars description.

No one to-day can possibly foresee [wrote the critic of the Weekly Review] to what heights the dance, as the expression of all life, will be carried. We can only call attention to the plans recently formulated by one of our leading publishers for a library of the world's best thought, to be issued at a price that will bring it within the reach of people of very moderate means. The library will consist of bound volumes of photographs showing the world's greatest dancers in their interpretation of famous authors. Twenty young women from the Paris and St. Petersburg conservatories of dancing have already been engaged. Among other works they will dance the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, the second book of the Iliad, "Œdipus the King," the fifth Canto of Dante's "Inferno," Spinoza's "Ethics," "Hamlet," Rousseau's "Confessions," "Mother Goose," Tennyson's "Brook" and the "Charge of the Light Brigade," Burke's "Speech on Conciliation," "Alice in Wonderland," the "Pickwick Papers," the Gettysburg Address, Darwin's "Origin of Species," and Mr. Dooley.