The recrudescence of the Dancing Mania first took notable form on a certain Sunday evening. At Queen’s Hall the Sunday League--which is in no way to be associated with the Leaguers of London--had organised one of those frequent and excellent concerts which, presumably, are intended to provide a suitable substitute for religious worship in our churches. A famous conductor, whose brilliant services to the cause of the higher music had brought him a world-wide reputation, was there to sway with his bâton the finest orchestral band ever known to the music-lovers of London. The great hall and the vast galleries were densely packed, and as the programme proceeded, the heat, generated by hundreds upon hundreds of listening humans, became intense and overpowering. There was a marked sense of overstrain during the wonderful rendering of Tchaikovsky’s lengthy Symphony (No. 6 in B minor). The music itself was full of subtle emotion. Deep melancholy alternated with swelling excitement. The passionate pessimism of the Russian character communicated itself through the medium of the score to those among the great audience who were predisposed to share it. The tragic gloom and fatalism of the movement hung like a thunder-cloud in the stifling atmosphere, and the wailing sadness of the subdued finale was succeeded by a tense silence. Then, as the audience was about to burst into the accustomed applause, a woman rose in the body of the hall, and gave a piercing shriek. The effect was electrical. Hundreds of people started to their feet. Another shriek, still more weird and piercing, drew a like response from scores of throats. In an instant confusion reigned throughout the hall and corridors, and in the balconies. Attempts to restore silence and order were drowned in the general tumult. Here and there, men and women, unable to reach the aisles, tried to climb over the closely ranged lines of movable stalls. Many of these seats fell with a crash, and horrified spectators in the balconies saw masses of people heaped and struggling on the ground. The bandsmen had risen excitedly, instruments in hand, unheeding for once the gestures of the conductor, who turned with pallid face, the perspiration in great drops on his forehead, and made imploring gestures to the audience. Bruised and bleeding, distraught with terror, some of those who had fallen in the effort to escape struggled to their feet and fought viciously and desperately to reach the exit doors.