And when they had finished their elaborate and laborious training, and were deemed worthy to take the floor at the Buxton Galleries at all, they found that their new efficiency was a thin and ephemeral growth. The steps and rhythms and dances which they had but yesterday acquired, at how much trouble and expense, passed today into the contemptible limbo of the unfashionable, like the hats of last spring; and so the life of the devotee was one long struggle to keep himself abreast of the latest invention of the astute but commercially-minded professional teachers. “Forever climbing up the climbing wave,” forever studying, yet forever out-of-date, he oscillated hopefully between the Buxton Galleries and his chosen priest; and so swift and ruthless were the changes of fashion and the whims of the priesthood, that in order to get your money’s worth of the last trick you had learned, it was necessary, during its brief life of respectability, to dance at every available opportunity.