ent graces of the barbecue numbers
of the ascetic and jeans-clad elder worthies, though fed to repletion,
collogued unhappily together among the ox-teams and canvas-hooded wagons
on the slope, commenting sourly on the frivolity of the dance. These
might be relied on to cast no ballots in the interest of its promoters,
with whose views they were to be favored between the close of the feast
and the final dance before sunset.

The trees waved full-foliaged branches above the circle of sawdust and
dappled the sunny expanse with flickering shade, and as they swayed
apart in the wind they gave evanescent glimpses of tiers on tiers of the
faint blue mountains of the Great Smoky Range in the distance, seeming
ethereal, luminous, seen from between the dark, steep, wooded slopes of
the narrow watergap hard by, through which Headlong Creek plunged and
roared. The principal musician, perched with his fellows on a hastily
erected stand, was burly, red-faced, and of a jovial aspect. He had a
brace of fiddlers, one on each side, but with his own violin under
his double-chin he alone "called the figures" of the old-fashioned
contradances. Now and again, with a wide, melodious, sonorous voice, he
burst into a snatch of song:

"Shanghai chicken he grew so tall,
In a few days--few days,
Cannot hear him crow at all-----"

Sometimes he would intersperse jocund personal remarks in his
Terpsichorean commands: "Gents, forward to the centre--back--swing: the
lady ye love the best." Then in alternation, "Ladies, forward to the
centre--back----" and as the mountain damsels teetered in expectation
of the usual supplement of this mandate he called out in apparent
expostulation, "_Don't_ swing him, Miss--he don't wuth a turn."

Suddenly the tune changed and with great gusto he chanted forth:

"When fust I did a-courtin' go,
Says she 'Now, _don't_ be foolish, Joe,'"

the _tempo rubato_ giving fresh impetus to the kaleidoscopic whirl of
the dancers. The young men were of indomitable endurance and manifested
a crude agility as they sprang about clumsily in time to the scraping
of the fiddles, while their partners shuffled bouncingly or sidled
mincingly according to their individual persuasion of the most apt
expression of elegance. Considered from a critical point of view the
dance was singularly devoid of grace--only one couple illustrating the
exception to the rule. The youth it was who was obviously beautiful, of