up the banjo from the bed and put it into the boy's hands.
"Here, you just play that tune agin!"

Chad shrank back, half distressed and half happy, and only a hail
outside from the first of the coming guests saved him from utter
confusion. Once started, they came swiftly, and in half an hour all
were there. Each got a hearty welcome from old Joel, who, with a wink
and a laugh and a nod to the old mother, gave a hearty squeeze to some
buxom girl, while the fire roared a heartier welcome still. Then was
there a dance indeed--no soft swish of lace and muslin, but the active
swing of linsey and simple homespun; no French fiddler's bows and
scrapings, no intricate lancers, no languid waltz; but neat shuffling
forward and back, with every note of the music beat; floor-thumping
"cuttings of the pigeon's wing," and jolly jigs, two by two, and a
great "swinging of corners," and "caging the bird," and "fust lady to
the right CHEAT an' swing"; no flirting from behind fans and under
stairways and little nooks, but honest, open courtship--strong arms
about healthy waists, and a kiss taken now and then, with everybody to
see and nobody to care who saw. If a chair was lacking, a pair of
brawny knees made one chair serve for two, but never, if you please,
for two men. Rude, rough, semi-barbarous, if you will, but simple,
natural, honest, sane, earthy--and of the earth whence springs the oak
and in time, maybe, the flower of civilization.

At the first pause in the dance, old Joel called loudly for Chad. The
boy tried to slip out of the door, but Dolph seized him and pulled him
to a chair in the corner and put the banjo in his hands. Everybody
looked on with curiosity at first, and for a little while Chad
suffered; but when the dance turned attention from him, he forgot
himself again and made the old thing hum with all the rousing tunes
that had ever swept its string. When he stopped at last, to wipe the
perspiration from his face, he noticed for the first time the
school-master, who was yet divided between the church and the law,
standing at the door, silent, grave, disapproving. And he was not alone
in his condemnation; in many a cabin up and down the river, stern talk
was going on against the ungodly 'carryings on,' under the Turner roof,
and, far from accepting them as proofs of a better birth and broader
social ideas, these Calvinists of the hills set the merry-makers down
as the special prey of the devil, and the dance and the ba