If I were to hear a certain strain played in the desert of Sahara or on the plains of Idaho, I should instantly “forward and back and cross over,”--and so, I warrant, would most of my generation of Boston people. There is one grave and courteous gentleman of my acquaintance, whom to see dance the shawl-dance with his fairy sister was a dream of poetry. As for the gavotte--O beautiful Amy! O lovely Alice! I see you now, with your short, silken skirts flowing out to extreme limit of crinoline; with your fair locks confined by the discreet net, sometimes of brown or scarlet chenille, sometimes of finest silk; with snowy stockings, and slippers fastened by elastic bands crossed over the foot and behind the ankle; with arms and neck bare. If your daughters to-day chance upon a photograph of you taken in those days, they laugh and ask mamma how she could wear such queer things, and make such a fright of herself! But I remember how lovely you were, and how perfectly you always dressed, and with what exquisite grace you danced the gavotte. [Illustration: LAURA E. RICHARDS.] So, I think, all we who jumped and changed our feet, who pirouetted and chasséed under Mr. Papanti, owe him a debt of gratitude. His hall was a paradise, the stiff little dressing-room, with its rows of shoe-boxes, the antechamber of delight,--and thereby hangs a tale. The child Laura grew up, and married one who had jumped and changed his feet beside her at Papanti’s, and they two went to Europe and saw many strange lands and things; and it fell upon a time that they were storm-bound in a little wretch of a grimy steamer in the Gulf of Corinth. With them was a travelling companion who also had had the luck to be born in Boston, and to go to dancing-school; the other passengers were a Greek, an Italian, and--I think the third was a German, but as he was seasick it made no difference. Three days were we shut up there while the storm raged and bellowed, and right thankful we were for the snug little harbor which stretched its protecting arms between us and the white churning waste of billows outside the bar.