a ball these _Vortanzer_ are the ones who see that all dancing
is conducted strictly according to rule and manage the affairs
of the ball-room with true Prussian efficiency. Supper is about
ten-thirty at a court ball and is at small tables. Each royalty
has a table holding about eight people and to these people are
invited without particular rule as to precedence. The younger
guests and lower dignitaries are not placed at supper but find
places at tables to suit themselves. After supper all go back
to the ball-room and there the young ladies and officers, led
by the _Vortanzer_ execute a sort of lancers, in the final
figure of which long lines are formed of dancers radiating from
the throne; and all the dancers make bows and curtsies to the
Emperor and Empress who are either standing or sitting at this
time on the throne. At about eleven-thirty the ball is over,
and as the guests pass out through the long hall, they are given
glasses of hot punch and a peculiar sort of local Berlin bun, in
order to ward off the lurking dangers of the villainous winter
climate.

At the court balls the diplomats are, of course, in their best
diplomatic uniform. All Germans are in uniform of some kind, but the
women do not wear the long trains worn at the _Schleppencour_.
They wear ordinary ball dresses. In connection with court dancing
it is rather interesting to note that when the tango and turkey
trot made their way over the frontiers of Germany in the autumn
of 1913, the Emperor issued a special order that no officers of
the army or navy should dance any of these dances or should go
to the house of any person who, at any time, whether officers
were present or not, had allowed any of these new dances to be
danced. This effectually extinguished the turkey trot, the bunny