The Argosy — page 294: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

>= Among the Hungarians. 299 always heard the Csardas spoken of as something almost savage in its wildness, and these people might have been on their way to a funeral for aught of animation they evinced. The instruments of the gipsies all seemed to be bewailing their fate in chorus; the cymbalom trembled with emotion, the face of the leader of the band was so long that I thought he was meditating an unusually appalling suicide. But before I knew it, the music had changed and the fun grew fast and furious. ‘The previous step, or something very like it, was continued, only sixteen times as fast, so that the dancers did nothing but bob up and down like corks on a stormy sea. ‘They still held each other, and never moved from the place where they had taken their stand, for a Csardas must be danced on as small a space of ground as possible. Now I understood that one must be a born Hungarian to dance the Csardas ; for I caught sight of Erzsi, and by a slight movement was able to watch her evolutions ; and I came to the conclusion that an Englishwoman of her rank would as soon think of dancing the Csardas, as it ought to be danced, as of dancing a ballet. Her partner held her little waist on either side, and every now and then twisted or rolled her to and fro between his hands, and then changed or threw her from one arm to the other, her hands being meanwhile upon his shoulders, and she looking straight into his eyes with a pair of the loveliest orbs that ever bewildered a man’s senses. They had already been dancing at least for half an hour, and the bobbing up and down had lapsed into a kind of continual tremulous movement, but the excitement seemed to increase. Erzsi’s partner held her with one hand, and waved his hand above his head with a shout, caught her in both hands, and whirled her wildly round and round, let her go, and putting his two hands to his head (with the gesture, as I thought, of a man going mad), executed a wonderful double shuffle with his feet, and then began to whirl round and round like a dervish, she doing the same, till with one accord they stopped, and seemed to fling themselves into each other’s arms again. Imagine these manceuvres executed continually by a dozen couples, all dancing so close to each other that they frequently touched, and, above all, so close to the gipsies that a stumble or a fall would have smashed in the cymbalom, or utterly exterminated the double bass. Imagine the fearful noise of eight or nine instruments in one com- paratively small room; and, added to that, the stamping and shuffling of feet, the occasional shout of the dancers, and a lively conversation going on among the spectators—and then imagine the heat. The thinnest members of the community looked as if they had spent a month in a vapour bath; but the more robust appeared as though a watering cart had just gone over them, so damp and limp were they; even their very moustachios hung down at the corners, and gave them a ludicrously forlorn appearance. (A) CON LOOKS (GO