United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In all the neighborhood gatherings, when settlers of various ages came together at corn-huskings or house-raisings, or when mere chance brought half a dozen of them at the same time to the post-office or the country store, he was able, according to his years, to add his full share to the gaiety of the company.
Hard work and a monotonous diet made him continually thirsty; and while ordinarily he drank only water and milk at home, at the taverns and at social gatherings he often succumbed to potations which left him in happy drunken forgetfulness of daily hardships. House-raisings and weddings often became orgies marked by quarreling and fighting and terminating in brutal and bloody brawls.
The customary social gatherings were at horse-racings, at corn-shuckings, at political speech-makings, at weddings, whereat the coarse proceedings would not nowadays bear recital; at log-rollings, where the neighbors gathered to collect the logs of a newly cleared lot for burning; and at house-raisings, where they kindly aided to set up the frame of a cabin for a new-comer; at camp-meetings, where the hysterical excitement of a community whose religion was more than half superstition found clamorous and painful vent; or perchance at a hanging, which, if it met public approbation, would be sanctioned by the gathering of the neighbors within a day's journey of the scene.
There are to-day fewer log-rollings and house-raisings, fewer husking bees and quilting parties than in former times; and no new social gatherings have taken their place. Our mountain farmer, seeing all arable land taken up, and the free range ever narrowing, has grown jealous and distrustful, resenting the encroachment of too many sharers in what once he felt was his own unfenced domain.
Log-rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, quiltings, and the like were occasions when all the neighbors came together to do what the family itself could hardly accomplish alone.
Back in the mountains in the days of William York, there were other forms of amusement than the shooting-matches. The "log-rollings," the "house-raisings," which always ended in a feast or barbecue, continued popular with the people. And they had "corn-huskings," to which all the neighbors came. The "corn-husking" was a winter sport.
Only, where they had lived he had been born in a log cabin. Their weapons the axe and the rifle had been his. He had had the same fight with Nature as they. He knew as well as they what life in the woods in "a half-faced camp" was. Their rude sports and pastimes, their log-rollings, house-raisings, quilting parties, corn-huskings, feats of strength, had been his.
Huskings and house-raisings were times when all joined freely to work for the man whose corn men was to be shucked or whose log cabin was to be built, and turned their labor into a frolic and merrymaking, where the men drank much whiskey and the young people danced vigorously to the sound of the fiddle.
And when the autumn came, there were husking parties and dances and much merriment; and, night after night, Chad saw Sintha and the school-master in front of the fire "settin' up" close together with their arms about each other's necks and whispering. And there were quilting parties and housewarmings and house-raisings one that was of great importance to Caleb Hazel and to Chad.
Sometimes the boys went coon-hunting and there were corn-shuckings, house-raisings and quilting-parties. "Does anybody round here play the banjo?" "None o' my boys," said the old woman, "but Tom Green's son down the creek he follers pickin' the banjo a leetle." "Follows pickin' " the Blight did not miss that phrase. "What do you foller fer a livin'?" the old man asked me suddenly.
Word Of The Day