We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing to be superior to their pantomime. Yet he failed to appreciate the true cause of this superiority, and he was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the _burattini_ in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us how the principal dancer suddenly appears, "knocks her wooden knees together, and jerking her head about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as artificial as we could see in the best trained of her fleshly rivals." But this artificial smile must have been fixed and permanent on the features of this diminutive dancer--or else the Roman-American essayist merely imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly ease, after describing air-circles with her toes far higher than her head and poising herself in impossible positions, she bounds or rather flies forward with superhuman lightness, performs feats of choreography to awaken envy in Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, and, poising on her pointed toe that disdains to touch the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on nothing at all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward, she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive your applause." This description is unsympathetic, and it induces the surmise that the operator of the _burattini_ at the performance described was not a master of his art and did not know how to profit by the possibilities of that art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why the suspended puppet is superbly qualified to excel in ballet-dancing; that phrase is the one which credits the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and movement and grace, is able to imitate easily and exquisitely the most difficult feats of the human dancer. If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended figure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating ethereality surpassing that attainable by any living performer. Now, this floating ethereality is precisely the quality which gives us most pleasure when we are spectators at the performance of a really fine ballet. It is the supreme art of the great dancer to soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn the stage and to abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion possible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved it is but fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within the control of the manipulator of the puppet-dancers. He can make them execute feats of levitation, achievable only by the most marvelously gifted and by the most arduously trained of human dancers. [Illustration: Puppets in Burma] [Illustration: The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)]