The Dancing Partner – English story of the month – September
The Dancing Partner
by Jerome K Jerome – from Novel Notes, London, 1893
‘This story,’ commenced MacShaugnassy, ‘comes from Furtwangen, a small town in the Black Forest.’ There lived there a very wonderful old fellow named Nicholaus Geibel. His business was the making of mechanical toys, at which work he had acquired an almost European reputation. He made rabbits that would emerge from the heart of a cabbage, flop their ears, smooth their whiskers, and disappear again; cats that would wash their faces, and mew so naturally that dogs would mistake them for real cats and fly at them; dolls with phonographs concealed within them, that would raise their hats and say, ‘Good morning; how do you do?’ and some that would even sing a song.