"Boys and girls; but all must pass a physical examination just as applicants for army service are required to do. If they are fortunate in having been endowed by nature with health and symmetry of form they are received into the school and enter at once upon its rigorous course of training. Oh, I tell you a ballet school is not the same here as it is in the old country. There must be perfect silence; not a word from the moment the master appears before the line of pupils, and after that nothing but the motions of the hundred or more bodies and the beating of the master's stick upon the floor."
"How long must they practice each day?"
"Well, before they are supposed to enter the academy at all, they must have had one or two years' practice outside. In the academy they have four hours' practice under the direction of the master every day; but many of them do more work than this, especially the most ambitious. I used to practice from eight to twelve hours daily, and even after having left the academy I kept up my daily exercise for increasing the limberness of the joints and the toughness of the cartilages. The more practice, the nearer perfection."
"I suppose the pupils are divided into classes, are they not?"
OBERON AND TITANIA.
Oberon:—What thou see'st when thou dost wake
Do it for thy true love take.
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II., Scene 3.
"Yes; we have four lines of dancers in Italy. You have only three here. We place our coryphees fartherest off from the premiere; you put them alongside. The beginners at La Scala go into the coryphee class, from which they are gradually advanced to the secunda lina, then to the prima lina, and, afterwards, to solo parts, when they practically become premieres."
"But eight years," I suggested, "is a long time to be working without any return in the shape of either money or glory?"