As to dancing, I _never_ dance, unless I am allowed to do it _in my own
peculiar way_. There is no use trying to describe it: it has to be seen
to be believed. The last house I tried it in, the floor broke through.
But then it was a poor sort of floor--the beams were only six inches
thick, hardly worth calling beams at all: stone arches are much more
sensible, when any dancing, _of my peculiar kind_, is to be done.
[Illustration]
Did you ever see the Rhinoceros and the Hippopotamus, at the Zoological
Gardens, trying to dance a minuet together? It is a touching sight.
[42] From a letter, written in 1873, to Gayner Simpson, a child friend
at Guildford.