difference the world over.

However, it was at one of these balls that I first saw the cake-walk.
There was a contest for a gold watch, to be awarded to the hotel
head-waiter receiving the greatest number of votes. There was some
dancing while the votes were being counted. Then the floor was cleared
for the cake-walk. A half-dozen guests from some of the hotels took
seats on the stage to act as judges, and twelve or fourteen couples
began to walk for a sure enough, highly decorated cake, which was in
plain evidence. The spectators crowded about the space reserved for
the contestants and watched them with interest and excitement. The
couples did not walk round in a circle, but in a square, with the men
on the inside. The fine points to be considered were the bearing of
the men, the precision with which they turned the corners, the grace
of the women, and the ease with which they swung around the pivots.
The men walked with stately and soldierly step, and the women with
considerable grace. The judges arrived at their decision by a process
of elimination. The music and the walk continued for some minutes;
then both were stopped while the judges conferred; when the walk began
again, several couples were left out. In this way the contest was
finally narrowed down to three or four couples. Then the excitement
became intense; there was much partisan cheering as one couple or
another would execute a turn in extra elegant style. When the cake
was finally awarded, the spectators were about evenly divided between
those who cheered the winners and those who muttered about the
unfairness of the judges. This was the cake-walk in its original
form, and it is what the colored performers on the theatrical stage
developed into the prancing movements now known all over the world,
and which some Parisian critics pronounced the acme of poetic motion.