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Updated: June 17, 2025
Tar-barrels were lighted, and the farm-servants and maids were dancing on the green. The flames sent their glare far over the heath, and the shrill sounds of the fiddle came sadly through the night. Paul stood at the garden fence and looked out into the distance. The servants had gone to the midsummer-night's fire, and his sisters had not come home yet, either.
It was a little lonesome, landin' in de midst ob a right smart piece ob timber, like a many another along de Big Muddy, whar de boats stop to wood up fearsome-enough place any day, but at night, wid dem tar-barrels a-flarin' an' dem women a-screechin' some on 'em gone clean crazy, and all on 'em actin' zif dey had it war more like dat place dan any 'scription I ebber heerd any minister gib ob it.
Before the tar-barrels, of which the bonfire was made, were half burned out, a great crowd had come together. They were chiefly laborers and seafaring men, together with many young apprentices, and all those idle people about town who are ready for any kind of mischief. Doubtless some school-boys were among them.
On either side of this line young men and women pass up and down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those of the tar-barrels.
The prince was escorted from the Town-gate to the Jacob's church amid a blaze of tar-barrels and torches, although it was mid-day, where a splendid exhibition had been arranged by that sovereign guild of rhetoric, "Jesus with the Balsam Flower." The drama was called Judas Maccabaeus, in compliment to the Prince.
You had to have a wagon, too, and some of the club pulled while the others rode; it could be such a wagon as you went walnutting with; and you had to wear strands of buckeyes round your neck. Then you were a real Whig boy, and you had a right to throw fire-balls and roll tar-barrels for the bonfires on election nights.
And indeed had the cipher of tar-barrels burnt, and of ale-barrels drunk, and the general account of wick and tallow spent in illuminations and in aldermanic exertions on the matter, been accurately taken, one doubts if Porto-Bello sold, without shot fired, to the highest bidder, at its floweriest, would have covered such a sum.
In that ancient and stately city there had been, accordingly, much marching about under triumphal arches, much cannonading and haranguing, much symbol work of suns dispelling fogs, with other cheerful emblems, much decoration of ducal shoulders with velvet robes lined with weasel skin, much blazing of tar-barrels and torches.
"We'll not be able to use them for the celebration to-night." "I'll fix you for this, Ritter; and you, too, Coulter!" called out Pepper, bitterly. "Oh, what luck!" he groaned, as he saw the flames from the tar-barrels climb higher and higher. "What a grand bonfire they would have made on the lake-front!" "Boys, this fire is dangerous!" ejaculated Jack. "What do you mean?" came from the others.
Of course there was a triumphal procession when, on the 11th February, the new satrap entered the obedient Netherlands, and there was the usual amount of bell-ringing, cannon-firing, trumpet-blowing, with torch-light processions, blazing tar-barrels, and bedizened platforms, where Allegory, in an advanced state of lunacy, performed its wonderful antics.
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