er, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in
his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head
with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the
facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a
party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,--and I don't blame
him,--he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how
better than they did!" It was a rather different _casus belli_ from that
which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it
"meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged
against dancing. I would have women dance, because it is the most
beautiful thing in the world. I would have men dance, if it is
necessary, in order to "set off" women, and to keep themselves out of
mischief; but in point of grace, or elegance, or attractiveness, I
should beg men to hold their peace--and their pumps.

From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or
other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like
going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all
the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and
down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like
bouquets of rare tropical flowers,--from the green, rainbowed in vivid
splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the
flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,--from the green, sanctified
already by the pale faces of sick and wounded and maimed soldiers who
had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the
sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth,
the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep
forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing
is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the plough of its
material prosperity into the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,--from
suggestions and fancies and dreamy musing and "phantasms sweet," into
the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of
fine, penetrating dust, and for lightly trooping fairies a jam of heated
human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the
press; and when you have, with difficulty and many contortions and much
apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of
fans,--what? An inclosure, but no more illusion.