The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-08-12


 wasn't a shining light in the dancing class
 However, Penrod's difficulty was not precisely of the kind his mother sup posed.
 Fanchon was soon showing him a new step, which she taught her next partner in turn, continuing instruc- tions during the dancing. The children crowded the floor, and in the kaleido- scppic tumble of bobbing heads and in termingling figures her extremely diff ferent style of motion was unobserved by the older people, who looked ons nodding time benevolently.
 Fanchon fascinated girls as well as boys Many, of the former eagerly sought her acquaintance and thronged about her between the dances, when. accepting the deferences due cosmo~ politan and an oracle of the mode, she gave demonstrations of the new step to succeeding groups, protesting as- tonishment to find it unknown. It had been "all the go,'' she explained, at the Long Shore Casino for fully two seasons. 4
 She pronounced very slow fan cy dance'' executed during an iIi- ternission by Baby Rennsdole and Georgie Bassett, giving it as her opin- ion that Miss Rennsdale and MT. Bas- sett were dead ones," and she ex- pressed surprise that the punch bowl contained lemonade and not cham pagne.
 The dancing continued, the new step gaining instantly in popularity, fresh couples adventuring with every num- Der The word step is somewhat misleading, nothing done with the feet being vital to the evoIutions intro duced by Fanchon Fanchon's dance { came from the orient by q roundabout way.
 Pausing in old Spain, taking on Gallic frankness in gallantry at. the Bal Bullier in Paris, combining with a relative from the south seas encoun- tered in San Francisco, dayorin g-ftself with a care free negroid abandon in New Orleans and accumulating too. something inexpressible from Mexico and South America, it kept throughout its travels to the underworld or to cir cles where nature is extremely frank and rank, until at last it reached the dives of New York when it immediate ly broke out in what is called civilized society
 Thereafter it soon spread in vari- ously modified forns-sone of them disinfected-to watering places and thence, carried by hundreds of older male and female Fanchons over the country. being eagerly adopted every l where and made wholly pure and re I spectab1e by the supreme moral axiom that anything is all right if enough ~peopIe do it.
 Everybody was doing it.
 Not quite everybody It was per haps some test. of this dance thai earth could furnish no more grotesque sight than that of children doing 1t
 Earth. assisted by Fanchon,s was fur nishing this sight at Penrod' s party By the time ice cream and cake arriv I ed about half the guests had eithel been initiated into the mysteries by Fanchon or were learning by inita ton, and the education of the othel half was resumed with the dancing when the attendant ladies, uncon scious of what was happening, with l drew into the house for tea and a bi of gossip.
 That orehestra's dead one.'' Fan chon remarked to Penrod. We ough to hven them up a little
 She approached :he musicians.
 Don't you know. she asked tn leader, ..the .Slingo Sligo Slide? 2 Q The leader giggled. nodded, rappe- with his bow upon his violin. and Pen rod, following Fanchon. back upon tn dancing floor blindly brushed with hi elbow a solitary little figure standin aloof 5on the lawn at the edge of tn platform.
 It was Marjorie.
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