National Police Gazette - From the Morgue

    The two very beautiful and lithesome young women who are pictured on this page as dancing out the steps of a very familiar measure known as the coochee-coochee, are not by any means the creatures of the artist's imagination. The originals are flesh and blood and are so much in demand that they are constantly scurrying from one place to another with their costumes packed in ridiculously small satchels, in order to keep pace with the popular demand for their combined presence. Their names are Little Egypt and Anita.
    An indulgent nature has peculiarly fitted them for their work, and when they appear it seems as though nothing in life was lacking.
    Their latest engagement was in Albany. The senators up there, burdened with the tremendous weight of State business, felt that they needed a relaxation in the shape of some novel divertissement not to be had at home so half a dozen of them got together and consulted a very wicked man who knew all about the world and only dabbled in affairs of state in an incidental way. They told him they wanted a little entertainment -- something entirely out of the ordinary, something that couldn't be seen in an ordinary theatre. And they also hinted that they were willing to pay a little extra for it. He brightened up immediately, and he looked thoughtful for a moment or so. Then the idea came to him.
    "Little Egypt and Anita!" he said, like a man who has been sitting up all night trying to solve a difficult problem and who has at last succeeded.
    "Who are they?" asked an up-country senator with fine white whiskers.
    "Why," said the wicked man, "they are the real things. Coochee-coochee. Tum-te-tum-te-tum. You know," and he swayed his body from side to side with a most suggestive movement.
    "Can you get them?"
"In a minute," he replied, falling into the slang of the hour.
    "How much will it cost?" asked a senator with thin lips and whose eyes were set so close together as to show his disposition.
    "About $10 each" answered the wicked one.
    So these staid gentlemen got together -- eight of them -- and concluded with sundry grins and grimaces that $10 each would be dirt cheap for a show like that. So they told the wicked one to bring on his Oriental beauties and turn them loose.
    In due time the two young women arrived. They went to a room which had been provided for the entertainment by the man of affairs, and there dressed. Not that, exactly, for undressed would be better, and when they were ready, a nimble-fingered pianist who was up in profane music, sounded the opening chords of the wicked dance. With writhing bodies and twitching muscles Anita and Little Egypt stepped out the measure while the senators looked on in open mouthed astonishment at the wonderful contortions of the dancers. Louder and louder banged the piano, more and more rapid the abdominal muscles of the dancers twitched. Their eyes gleamed with the excitement of it all, and their bosoms heaved with tantalizing irregularity. With a crash of chords the dance ceased, and as the pair glided away laughing into another room, the silence was broken by a long drawn out sigh from the senator with the white whiskers.
    "I've seen a good many things in my day," he murmured to the man sitting next to him, as he contemplatively knocked the ashes off his perfecto, "but this tops them all. I wouldn't have missed it for a thousand."
    After the dance there was a little dinner and the wicked one sat at the head of the table, with Little Egypt on one side and Anita on the other, while the senators bunched up as close as possible.
    The evening was a brilliant success and now they say the wicked man can get any bill passed that he likes.