Dancing With a Prince.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 202, 7 May 1887, Page 2

Dancing With a Prince.

An American gill (Miss iV.irn, dau^htci ot Walker Feam, the Amciican Minister to (Jreece), writes to one of he,. Nuw Oi leans friends as follows concerning a roy al ball : The gentlemen wei c all made to stand on one side of the room, the ladies on the other, quite like a Quaker meeting. A bioad pass-age was thus foimcd, down which the King and Queen, the Prince and l'i mce^s and members of the com t passed, bowing to right and left. The Queen was magnificent in a white satin, biocadcd in sihei, tiimmed with white loses and a diamond fringe. Her whole bodice wa.s covered with sapphires surrounded with diamonds, and her head and neck a bla/e of jewels. The royal circle, as it is called, was then founed in one corner of the loom, wheie the loyal family dance the quadiilles and -4t during the cotillon. The King ga\e the signal, and then dancing began. One veiy amusing feature way the manner in which the round dances were begun. When the iiist bais of the waltz weie played an aide-de-camp stood in the middle ot the floor, and called to the people to make a circle, on the edge of \\ hich stood the couples about to dance, each dancer grasping his partner fit inly by the waist, and pieparing at the earliest possible moment to plunge into the maddening nish of the deux-temps. which is danced here exclusively, and which is pei haps a (ride less rapid than the gallop. The Queen ga\e the signal and started round the circle w ith her partner ; then the Princess ; after her the Crown Prince, and then all the other couples followed one after the other, aiound and around, never turning to tho left, but on and on, faster and faster, each couple evidently entertaining but one notion - the one which characterises that exciting spoit of a slide on the ice, when there is only a burning anxiety lest yon should swallow up the man ahead of you, or in turn be swallowed up by the man behind you. The deux-temps us certainly great tun, but it requires no small amount of agility and exhausts a great deal of breath. You must be prepared to hop blithely over the prostrate couple who may have happened to fall ahead of you, or, if such a calamity should happen to yourself, to "lie low " while the oncoming couple clear you as they would a hurdle. At the palace ball thex-e were not many round dances, for the cotillon, which is the feature of the evening, begins early and lasts three houis. In between times supper is .served. I have forgotten to pay that the King dances the square dances with the wives of the foreign Ministers, the Queen with the King's aides-de-camp, and the Piince with tho young Greek girls. This is the usual etiquette. You may imagine my amazement when the Prince walked across to me aud said : "I have been looking for you ; I want you to dance the cotillon with me." He had ah eady sent word to me to dance opposite him in the quadrille, and I certainly did not expect more. I was naturally very much pleased at the compliment, first on my own account, and secondly because there were many Amci icans present who seemed to take a national pude in "Americans being the first in the field," as Mark Twain has observed.