A social gathering is never a success in any Jamaican hut or drawing-room unless the assembled guests are given leave to indulge in the pastime of the dance. Dancing is to the black lady what small talk is to her white sister. Indeed, it is infinitely more even than that. Dancing is everything. They dance when they are merry and full of joy, and they dance when they mourn their dead; they dance when they are hungry and when they have feasted. They dance when they are carrying their fruits to the market-place, and they dance as they return with the spoils of their trading. In moments of religious ecstasy their limbs twitch for the relief found in treading the graceful measure, and when great sorrow has fallen on a household, the members dance slowly to express their woe. Curiously enough their dancing lacks precision; they have not set pieces; no master teaches them “left foot forward, right foot up, twist”; there is no “one two three, hop, one two three, hop” about the coloured dance, yet it is always perfectly graceful. If there is music so much the better, but if there is no music the dancing goes on just the same. The Jamaicans dance with their legs and bodies and heads; all their limbs are brought into play. The arms wave in sympathy with the active legs, the body bends, the head is thrust forwards and backwards. The whole business is snake-like and fascinating. Sometimes when a large party is collected, a dance will be arranged to represent some story or history. Biblical pictures are the most popular, and the unrehearsed effect of fifty perspiring negroes, seeking to represent in a ballet the story of Jonah and the Whale, [Illustration: COUNTRYWOMAN GOING TO MARKET, BARBADOES] is not without a certain weird and extravagant humour. When the story is of a more bellicose kind--when, for instance, the tableau is that of David and Goliath, the David sometimes overdoes the punishment of the vanquished giant, and there is a little riot caused by the indignation of a too severely-handled artist, who had been persuaded with difficulty to enact the unpopular part. To the black people acting ceases to be make-believe as soon as the dancing begins; David is David, and Goliath is in fact the unhappy giant. So it can be imagined that difficulties frequently arise though there has been no malicious intent, and though the violence may have been born of pure unconscious art.