Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

30 SALMAGUNDI.
infinitude of endowments, he is but a poor proficient in dancing;
and though he often flounders through a cotillon, yet he never
cut a pigeonwing in his life.
In my mind there's no position more positive and unexceptionable than that most Frenchmen, dead or alive, are born
dancers. I came pounce upon this discovery at the assembly,
and I immediately noted it down in my register of indisputable
facts;-the public shall know all about it. As I never dance
cotillons, holding them to be monstrous distorters of the human
frame, and tantamount in their operations to being broken and
dislocated on the wheel, I generally take occasion, while they
are going on, to make my remarks on the company. In the
course of these observations I was struck with the energy and
eloquence of sundry limbs, which seemed to be flourishing about
without appertaining to anybody. After much investigation
and difficulty I, at length, traced them to their respective
owners, whom I found to be all Frenchmen to a man. Art
may have meddled somewhat in these affairs, but nature certainly
did more. I have since been considerably employed in calculations on this subject; and by the most accurate computation I
have determined, that a Frenchman passes at least three-fifths
of his time between the heavens and the earth, and partakes
eminently of the nature of a gossamer or soap-bubble. One of
these jack-o'-lantern heroes, in taking a figure, which neither
Euclid nor Pythagoras himself could demonstrate, unfortunately
wound himself-I mean his feet-his better part —into a lady's
cobweb muslin robe; but perceiving it at the instant, he set
himself a spinning the other way, like a top, unravelled his step,
without omitting one angle or curve, and extricated himself
without breaking a thread of the lady's dress! he then sprung
up, like a sturgeon, crossed his feet four times, and finished this