s-on in the broad open daylight, right before
everybody. I stood there and watched them for hours, expecting every
minute to see fire fall from heaven on them and burn up every son and
daughter of Belial. But it didn't.

I seem to recollect that it was a hot day, and that, tucked away where
not a breath of air could get to them, were three fellows in their
shirtsleeves, one playing on an organ, one on a yellow clarinet, and
one on a fiddle. Every chance he could get, the fiddler would say to the
organist: "Gimme A, please," and saw away trying to get into some sort
of tune, but the catgut was never twisted that would hold to pitch
with the perspiration dribbling down his fingers in little rills. The
clarinet man looked as if he wanted to cry, and he had to twitter his
eyelids all the time to keep the sweat from blinding him, and every once
in a while, his soggy reed would let go of a squawk that sounded like
a scared chicken. But the organ groaned on unrelentingly, and the tune
didn't matter so much as the rhythm which was kept up as regular as a
clock, whack! whack! whack! whack! And there were two or three other
fellows with badges on that went around shouting: "Select your podners
for the next quadrille! One more couple wanted right over here!"

Dancing. M-hm.

The fiddler "called off" and chanted to the tune, with his mouth on one
side: "Sullootch podners! First couple forward and back. Side couples
the same. Doe see do-o-o-o. Al-lee-man LEFT! Ballunce ALL! Sa-weeny the
corners!" I don't know whether I get the proper order of these commands
or not, or whether my memory serves me as to their effect, but it seems
to me that at "Bal-lunce ALL!" the ladies demurely teetered, first on
one foot and then on the other, like a frozen-toed rooster, while the
gents fairly tore themselves apart with grape-vine twists and fancy
steps, and slapped the dust out of the cracks in the floor. When it came
to "SaWEENG your podners!" the room billowed with flying skirts, and the
ladies squealed like anything. It made you a little dizzy to watch them
do "Graaan' right and left," and you could understand how those folks
felt--there were always one or two in each set--who had to be hauled
this way and that, not sure whether they were having a good time or
not, but hoping they were, their faces set in a sickly grin, while their
foreheads wrinkled into a puzzled: "How's that? I didn't quite catch
that last remark" expression. I don't know