r 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
a type as old as the fabled Endymion. His long brown hair hung in heavy
curls to the collar of his butternut jeans coat; his eyes were blue and
large and finely set; his face was fair and bespoke none of the mid-day
toil at the plow-handles that had tanned the complexion of his compeers,
for Brent Kayle had little affinity for labor of any sort. He danced
with a light firm step, every muscle supplely responsive to the strongly
marked pulse of the music, and he had a lithe, erect carriage which
imparted a certain picturesque effect to his presence, despite his much
creased boots, drawn over his trousers to the knee, and his big black
hat which he wore on the back of his head. The face of his partner had a
more subtle appeal, and so light and willowy was her figure as she
danced that it suggested a degree of slenderness that bordered on
attenuation. Her unbonneted hair of a rich blonde hue had a golden
lustre in the sun; her complexion was of an exquisite whiteness and with
a delicate flush; the chiseling of her features was peculiarly fine, in
clear, sharp lines--she was called "hatchet-faced" by her
undiscriminating friends. She wore a coarse, flimsy, pink muslin dress
which showed a repetitious pattern of vague green leaves, and as she
flitted, lissome and swaying, through the throng, with the wind
a-flutter in her full draperies, she might have suggested to a spectator
the semblance of a pink flower--of the humbler varieties, perhaps, but
still a wild rose is a rose.

Even the longest dance must have an end; even the stanchest mountain
fiddler will reach at last his limit of endurance and must needs be
refreshed and fed. There was a sudden significant flourish of frisky
bowing, now up and again down, enlisting every resonant capacity of
horsehair and catgut; the violins quavered to a final long-drawn scrape
and silence descended. Dullness ensued; the flavor of the day seemed to
pall; the dancers scattered and were presently following the crowd that
began to slowly gather about the vacated stand of the musicians, from
which elevation the speakers of the occasion were about to address their
fellow-citizens. One of the disaffected old far