Everything Old Is New Again

From our current affairs editor, Lemuel Stuart III:

Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager co-wrote "Everything Old I New Again," and two lines from the song state...

 No need to remember when
'Cause everything old is new again

That is true once again as the "Triangle Dance" has gone viral on the internet.

Below Left:  The latest silly viral thing to come from the internet: Triangle Dance   Below right:  Trump, Pence and McConnell tried the triangle dance in a back room at the White House

The Triangle Dance, though, did not come from the internet.  No, it came from Emmett Lee Dickinson, Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request.  He invented the dance in 1853 when he visited his third cousins Emily and Lavinia Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

Emily Dickinson LOVED the dance, and wrote about it in a letter she sent to her brother Austin who was away at the time: 

At the left:  A portion of a letter from Emily Dickinson to her brother Austin about their third cousin Emmett Lee Dickinson's new dance craze, the Triangle Dance. 

The text of the letter reads as follows:

This week, on Wednesday, I was at my window, when I happened to look towards the hotel and saw our third cousin Emmett walking over here as dignified as you please.  I need not tell you that I danced and clapped my hands, and flew to meet him, for you can imagine how I felt. He wanted to surprise me, and for that reason did not let me know he was coming.
 
What a time we had – why, he made me and my heart dance; and I cannot abate from dancing.  Austin, if I dance for so many days hence it is for a newly invented and glorious step from Emmett which he calls the Triangle Dance.  Vinnie and I grew so jolly but were so completely exhausted after hour upon hour we circled the room in jig.

Emmett Lee Dickinson wrote about his new sensation, the Triangle Dance, in his poem "I counted as we danced so" (below on the left).  His poem inspired his third cousin Emily to pen her poem "I counted till they danced so" (below on the right). 
​

By Emmett Lee Dickinson:
 
I counted as we danced so
Our slippers leapt about,
And then I took a pencil
To note the three steps down
And then I grew so jolly
We danced the three-side jig,
And ten times round we collided
I’d zagged instead of zigged!
​

By Emily Dickinson:
 
I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town,
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down.
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig,
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!
​