‘The musicians squatting against the wall begin the wailing of the flute, the hypnotic throb of “darabukkeh.” She who is designed to dance the Greeting enters holding before her a long scarf that half conceals her; the expression on her face is surprise, as though honor had fallen to her beyond her merits or expectation. Upon reaching her place she extends her arms forward, then slowly moves them, and with them the scarf, to one side, until she is revealed. When a nod confirms the command to dance, she quickly drops the scarf to the floor, advances to a place before the guest and near him, and honors him with a slave’s salutation. Then arising she proceeds to her silent Greeting. * * * ‘The Arabian dance is not a dance of movement; it is a dance of pictures, to which movement is wholly subordinate. Each bar of the music accompanies a picture complete in itself. Within the measure of each bar the dancer has time for the movements leading from one picture to the next, and to hold the picture for the instant necessary to give emphasis. At whatever moment she may be stopped, therefore, she is within less than a moment’s pose so perfectly balanced that it appears as a natural termination of the dance. The Oriental’s general indifference to the forces of accumulation and climax are consistent with such a capricious ending. In his dance each phrase is complete in itself; it may be likened to one of those serial stories in our magazines, in which each installment of the story is self-sufficient. ‘To the Occidental unused to Oriental art, the absence of crescendo and climax, and the substituted iteration carried on endlessly, is uninteresting. Nevertheless, a few days of life among Oriental conditions suffice to throw many a scoffer into attunement with the Oriental art idea, which is to soothe, not to stimulate. Moorish ornament is an indefinitely repeated series of marvellously designed units, each complete in itself, yet inextricably interwoven with its neighbors. In music the beats continue unchanging through bar after bar, phrase after phrase. The rhythmic repetition of the tile-designs on the wall, the decorative repetition of the beats of music, produce a spell of dreamy visioning comparable only to the effect of some potent but harmless narcotic.’