Through the interesting and exciting days of presenting Chaliapine, Schumann-Heink, Eugene Ysaye, Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, Tetrazzini, Tito Ruffo, the question of the dance, my other obsession, and how to do for it what I had succeeded in doing for music, was always in my mind. It was then I met The Swan. Anna Pavlova is a symbol of ballet in America; nay, throughout the world. I knew that here in America were a people who loved the dance, if they could but know it. The only way for them to know it, I felt, was to expose them to it in the finest form of theatre dance: the ballet. The position that ballet holds today in the affections of the American public is the result of that exposure, coupled with a strongly increasing enthusiasm that not only holds its devotees, but brings to it a constantly growing new audience. But it was not always thus. Prior to the advent to these shores of Anna Pavlova there was no continuous development. America, to be sure, had had theatrical dancing sporadically since the repeal of the anti-theatre act in 1789. But all of it, imported from Europe, for the most part, had been by fits and starts. From the time of the famous Fanny Ellsler’s triumphs in _La Tarantule_ and _La Cracovienne_, in 1840-1842, until the arrival of Anna Pavlova, in 1910, there was a long balletic drought, relieved only by occasional showers. America was not reluctant in its balletic demonstrations in the Fanny Ellsler period, when the opportunities for appreciation were provided. The American tour of the passionately dramatic Fanny Ellsler was made in a delirium of enthusiasm. She was the guest of President Van Buren at the White House, and during her Washington engagement, Congress suspended its sittings on the days she danced. She was pelted with flowers, and red carpets were unrolled and spread for her feet to pass over. Even the water in which she washed her hands was preserved in bottles, so it is said, and venerated as a sacred relic. Her delirious _Cachucha_ caused forthright Americans to perform the European balletomaniac rite of toasting her health in champagne drunk from her own ballet shoes. It is necessary now and then, I feel, to mark a time and place for purposes of guidance. Therefore, I believe that the first appearance of Anna Pavlova at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on 28th February, 1910 is a date to remember, since it may be said to mark the beginning of the ballet era in our country.