lights in a great glittering balloon, all hung with ropes
of shiny glass beads which fell down from the centre of the roof, blazed
up, and when I dropped my head from looking at it, all the other end of
the room was crowded with a gang of the queerest-looking people--men,
women, children, and dogs--that ever you did see. That was the opera,
Cousin E. E. said; though how an opera could have a house and a cart in
it, beat me.

Well, sisters, I give up. Roll every singing-school in Vermont into one
crowd, and they couldn't begin to burst out like that; men, women, and
girls, just went in for a splendid time, and they had it. First, a pew
full of fiddlers, drummers, tromboners, and bas-violers, let themselves
out in a storm of music that made the ten millions of beads on the glass
balloons tremble like hailstones. Then the whole gang lifted up their
voices, and the music rolled out just as I reckon the water does at
Niagara Falls. Such a general training of music was enough to wake the
dead out of a New England grave, where they sleep sound, I guess, if
they do anywhere.

By and by they rose up, and began to wander about, making their funny
little white dogs play, and some of the girls began to dance about. It
was a travelling-show, you see, and some of the upper-crust people came
out of the house I spoke of, and listened. One was a lady, dressed out
to kill in a striped skirt, black velvet, and yellow silk; another
yellow skirt bunched over that, and then a blue dress puffed above both,
and her hair just splendid. I tell you she was a dasher!

But the people were all busy unloading the cart; they took out bundles
and baskets and things. Finally a girl, that had been lying asleep on
the load, jumped down, with her shoulders hitched up, and looking cross
as fire at everybody that came near her. She was barefooted and
bareheaded, and had nothing but an under night-gown and petticoat on,
which seemed to aggravate her, for she looked scowling enough at the
handsome young lady, and would not double-shuffle worth a cent, though
all the men and women were trying to make her.

The moment she jumped off from the cart, the folks in the seats just ran
crazy, and began clapping their hands and stamping their feet like a
house afire; I never saw people act so in my life. It was enough to
frighten the poor thing half to death. Instead of that, it seemed to
tickle her mightily, for she came forward, with her bare feet, and made
a lit