User:Acdewart/sandbox

Ambrose Bierce: Use of "light fantastic" "The Dance of Death" First appeared under the pseudonym "William Herman." Published by Keller: San Francisco, 1877.

“’Ah, yes,’ continued my enthusiastic friend, ‘it isn’t the whirling that makes the waltz, and those who think it is are the poorest dancers. A little judicious handling will make a sylph out of the veriest gawk of a girl that ever attempted the ‘light fantastic;’ and once manage to initiate one of those stay-at-home young ladies, and I’ll warrant you she’ll be on hand at every ball she is invited to for the rest of that season I’ll wager sir, that there isn’t a ‘scrub’ in this room who just knows the step but what I can make a dancer of her in fifteen minutes. . . ” (63).

“Having, at his queen’s express solicitation, essayed the ‘light fantasti’ with these ladies, the good Caribert, who had before no thought for any woman but his wife, suddenly became so enamoured with the skill and grace of the sitsters, that he not only forswore the chase forever, but with all possible dispatch divorced Ingoberge and married first Meroflede and then Marcovere” (118).