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Updated: June 18, 2025
Under the roof, on the galérie, the wheel hummed, the loom pounded; inside, the logs crackled and blazed on the hearth; on the board were venison, mallard, teal, rice-birds, sirop de baterie, and quitte; round the fireside were pipes, pecans, old stories, and the Saturday-night contra-dance; and every now and then came sounding on the outer air the long, hoarse bellow of some Mississippi steamer, telling of the great world beyond the tree-tops, a little farther than the clouds and nearer than the stars.
At ten o'clock, a dance was arranged before the door of one of the huts. The dark-skinned maidens, requiring but little time to put on their ball-costume, came dropping in, until, before midnight, there were thirty or forty dancers on foot. The figures were compounded of the contra-dance and reel, with some remarkable touches of the Mandingo balance.
The heavy "heart bowed down by weight of woe" suddenly imbibes some of the joyous elasticity which fills the insect tribe, the bees and grasshoppers, the golden fly, glittering and humming in pure ecstasies, and the merry little beetles revelling in one continuous contra-dance.
Josephine felt almost affrighted at this pertinacity of the general, and a sentiment of apprehension overcame her as she looked into the pale, decided countenance of this man, a stranger to her, and who claimed her for his wife. "Oh, sir," exclaimed she, with some anguish, "you offer me your hand with as much carelessness as if the whole matter were merely for a contra-dance.
Eaton was the honored guest, who led the contra-dance, and occupied the seat at table on the right of the host. Some respectable ladies were so shocked by her audacity that they would leave a room when she entered it. She was openly denounced by clergymen, and she found herself in positions which would have covered almost any other woman in Washington with shame. Mrs.
"Will my cousin do me the honor to dance this contra-dance with me?" "Yes, cousin," replied the Princess Amelia. "OLDENZAAL, August 25th, 1841.
There is no modern "function" that has one-half the fun in it that an old-time husking-bee had, and no dance that can compare with an old-fashioned contra-dance enjoyed in a big barn, with one energetic fiddler perched in a corner for an orchestra, and six lanterns to light the festivities! It was music, mirth, care-free happiness and frolic personified.
The fiddler's seat is mounted on a table in the corner, the fiddler is in it, each beau has led a maiden into the floor, the sets are made for the contra-dance, the young men stand expectant, their partners wait with downcast eyes and mute lips as Acadian damsels should, the music strikes up, and away they go. Yes, Zoséphine sees the whole bright scene over again whenever that strain sounds.
Doctor Charlie Keene, speaking from under the disguise of the Indian Queen, had indeed so said; but the Recording Angel, whom we understand to be particular about those things, had immediately made a memorandum of it to the debit of Doctor Keene's account. "If I had believed that it was he," continued the whisperer, "I would have turned about and left him in the midst of the contra-dance!"
In this way 'Thanase and his pretty little jarmaine first cousin Zoséphine, now in her fourteenth year, grew to be well acquainted. For at thirteen, of course, she began to move in society, which meant to join in the contra-dance. 'Thanase did not dance with her, or with any one. She wondered why he did not; but many other girls had similar thoughts about themselves.
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