From a sale of meeting-house pews or an ordination, to a ball
or a general training, rum was the touch of nature that made the whole
world of our forefathers kin. And if Desire did but wet her lips with
the flip to-night, it was because the company rather than the beverage
offended her taste. For even at risk of alienating the sympathies of
my teetotal readers, I must refrain from claiming for the maiden a
virtue which had not then been invented.
The appearance of Uncle Sim's black and smiling countenance, as he
entered bowing and grinning, his fiddle under his arm, was hailed with
uproar and caused a prodigious accession of activity among the
huskers, the completion of whose task would be the signal for the
dancing to begin. The red ears turned up so rapidly as to suggest the
theory that some of the youths had stuffed their pockets with a
selected lot from the domestic corn bin before coming. But though this
opinion was loudly expressed by the girls, it did not seem to excite
that indignation in their bosoms which such unblushing duplicity
should have aroused. Half a dozen lively tussles for kisses were
constantly going on in various parts of the floor and the uproar was
prodigious.
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