[Ads-l] to bulldag, etc.

[Jonathan Lighter]

D. F. Mac Martin recalls the dance halls and bagnios of Oklahoma Territory
in the 1890s in _Thirty Years in Hell_ (Topeka: Capper Ptg. Co., 1921), p.
25:

A tenderloin maestro banged and thumped the ivory keys of a bum piano like
an ass at the lyre. Under this spell they "bull-dagged" and danced the
Hoocheecoochee, the Italian Tarantella, the snail drag, the shimmy shiver
and old risque reels with free-floating drapery. They also did the ‘‘short
dog,'' the Sphinx-winx and the Cleopatra clutch with barbaric abandon.

Mac Martin had been a morphine addict, and his whole book is in this highly
colored style. An annotated edition would be desirable.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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