... Before the dancing began an ode to the artiste from the emotional pen of Sir Ernest Cassel was read by Sir John Fisher, containing these memorable lines:-- Barefooted Bacchanal, would that I were Kipling To celebrate thy marvellous arm-rippling! ... The new dances were four in number, and in them She personated in turn Pharaoh's Daughter in her famous fandango known tastefully as the Bull Rush; Jephthah's Daughter in her final macabre Hebrew fling, on hearing of her father's vow and her own fate; Uriah's wife in her _pas de liberté_ after the battle; and Jezebel in her defiant tarantella before a waxen Elijah--all new and all marvellously restrained (not only in dress) and full of scriptural tact.... At the end of the turn the applause lasted fourteen minutes, and She was led on eleven times. Free restoratives were then distributed in the theatre, ambulances removed those admirers who were too far gone to remain any longer, and the programme proceeded. Late at night She was drawn to her residence at Frognal in a carriage from which the horses had been removed, the Prime Minister, Mr. Walkley, Mr. Alfred Butt and a number of other talented gentlemen taking their places. Never was there such a triumph. [Sidenote: _The "Follies"_] Happily there were antidotes to the plague of Biblical Bacchanals; none better than that supplied for several seasons by the late Mr. Pélissier and his "Follies," to whom _Punch_ expressed his gratitude in 1910. It was a "priceless" entertainment, with its "Potted Plays," admirable burlesques of the music-hall stage, opera, the Russian ballet, and on occasion, as in "Everybody's Benefit," really acute satire of the histrionic temperament. "The Follies" have had reincarnations and successors and imitators, but _Punch's_ doggerel is not a bad picture of the troupe at its best, before the late Miss Gwennie Mars left them, and when Mr. Lewis Sydney, Mr. Dan Everard, Mr. Morris Harvey, and Miss Muriel George contributed nightly to the gaiety of the London public:-- When life seems drear and hollow, When Fortune wears a frown, I haste to the Apollo And plank my dollar down. Outside the tempest vollies Against uplifted brollies; I care not, for "the Follies" Are back in London town. Pélissier, prince of "Potters," You earn our grateful thanks, You and your fellow plotters-- Co-partners in your pranks-- For slating smart inanity, Or Fashion's last insanity, Or histrionic vanity, Or madness _à la_ Manx. From introspective thinking In every minor key, Good Sydney, grimly blinking, You set my spirit free. If laughing makes one fatter, Then listening to your patter, O very harebrained hatter, Has added pounds to me.