I recalled, however, that one of them took the trouble, in the course of our conversation, to learn the name of the hotel at which I was staying. I had quite forgotten the incident when, some time after, I received a little casket, addressed to me from India. It contained a skirt of very thin white silk, of a peculiar shape, and some pieces of silk gauze. The box was not more than sixteen inches long and was hardly taller than a cigar box. It contained nothing else, not a line, not a card. How odd! From whom could it come? I knew no one in India. All at once, however, I remembered the dinner and the young officers. I was greatly taken with my pretty box, but I was far from suspecting that it contained the little seed from which an Aladdin’s lamp was destined to spring for my benefit. This, of course, was the casket which I had just discovered in my trunk. Deep in thought I stooped and gathered up the soft, silky stuff. I put on the Hindu skirt, the skirt sent me by my two young officers, those young men who must by this time have “served as targets” somewhere out there in the jungle, for I never heard from them again. My robe, which was destined to become a triumphal robe, was at least a half a yard too long. Thereupon I raised the girdle and so shaped for myself a sort of empire robe, pinning the skirt to a décolleté bodice. The robe looked thoroughly original, perhaps even a little ridiculous. It was entirely suitable for the hypnotism scene, which we did not take very seriously. [Illustration: LOIE FULLER IN HER ORIGINAL SERPENTINE DRESS _Photo_ _Sarony_] We “tried the play on the dog” before offering it to the New York public, and I made my debut as a dancer at a theatre in a small city of which the average New Yorker had hardly heard. No one, I suppose, outside its boundaries took the slightest interest in what went on in that city. At the end of the play, on the evening of the first presentation, we gave our hypnotism scene. The stage scenery, representing a garden, was flooded with pale green light. Dr. Quack made a mysterious entrance and then began his work of suggestion. The orchestra played a melancholy air very softly, and I endeavoured to make myself as light as possible, in order to give the impression of a fluttering figure obedient to the doctor’s orders. He raised his arms. I raised mine. Under the influence of suggestion, entranced--so, at least, it looked--with my gaze held by his, I followed his every motion. My robe was so long that I was continually stepping upon it, and mechanically I held it up with both hands and raised my arms aloft, all the while that I continued to flit around the stage like a winged spirit. There was a sudden exclamation from the house: “It’s a butterfly! A butterfly!” I turned on my steps, running from one end of the stage to the other, and a second exclamation followed: “It’s an orchid!”