un, sure of a
good trade when the dancing was over. Mr. Jensen, the Danish laundryman,
used to bring a chair from his porch and sit out in the grass plot. Some
ragged little boys from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under a
white umbrella at the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsters
who came to dance. That vacant lot soon became the most cheerful place
in town. Even on the hottest afternoons the cottonwoods made a rustling
shade, and the air smelled of popcorn and melted butter, and Bouncing
Bets wilting in the sun. Those hardy flowers had run away from the
laundryman's garden, and the grass in the middle of the lot was pink
with them.

The Vannis kept exemplary order, and closed every evening at the hour
suggested by the city council. When Mrs. Vanni gave the signal, and
the harp struck up 'Home, Sweet Home,' all Black Hawk knew it was ten
o'clock. You could set your watch by that tune as confidently as by the
roundhouse whistle.

At last there was something to do in those long, empty summer evenings,
when the married people sat like images on their front porches, and the
boys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks--northward to
the edge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back again to the
post-office, the ice-cream parlour, the butcher shop. Now there was a
place where the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one could
laugh aloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence. That silence
seemed to ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the black
maple trees with the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by lighthearted
sounds. First the deep purring of Mr. Vanni's harp came in silvery
ripples through the blackness of the dusty-smelling night; then the
violins fell in--one of them was almost like a flute. They called
so archly, so seductively, that our feet hurried toward the tent of
themselves. Why hadn't we had a tent before?

Dancing became popular now, just as roller skating had been the summer
before. The Progressive Euchre Club arranged with the Vannis for the
exclusive use of the floor on Tuesday and Friday nights. At other times
anyone could dance who paid his money and was orderly; the railroad men,
the roundhouse mechanics, the delivery boys, the iceman, the farm-hands
who lived near enough to ride into town after their day's work was over.

I never missed a Saturday night dance. The tent was open until midnight
then. The country boys came in fro