"For children there have been accepted La Veta and the Russian Militaire, the latter a semi-drill and march step, combining simple and graceful poses for the little ones."

-- Marie Petravsky, "New Fads in Dances", The Sunday Morning Call (Lincoln, Nebraska). Sunday, October 25, 1896, p. 5.

The accepting organization referred to was The Western Association and Normal School of Masters of Dancing, which also accepted a number of dances for adults that year. The newspaper article was timed to the start of the new dancing season in New York, but on the sheet music it is noted that the dance was adopted on June 11, 1896, in Toledo, Ohio. It is also claimed, apparently inaccurately, that "This Dance was the only Dance adopted out of ten others presented."

The choreographer of the dance was John A. Mahler, brother of the much better-known St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler. Both brothers taught children; another of John Mahler's dances, the Two and a Half Step, was inscribed to "the Young Ladies of the Mary Institute and Hosmer Hall", two St. Louis schools. There is no indication on the sheet music that it was meant for children, which makes one wonder how many of the other simple sequence dances of the period might also have been meant for the younger set...[easy dance behind the cut]