4
Kittie Fleming was a pretty black-eyed girl, who afterward made the trouble between Bob Wade and his father. At this party the thing which made it a sad affair to me was the attentions paid to Virginia by Bob. I might have been comforted by the nice way Kittie Fleming treated me, if I had had eyes for any one but Virginia; but when Kittie smiled on me, I always thought how much sweeter was Virginia's smile. But her smiles that evening were all for Bob Wade. In fact, he gave nobody else a chance. It really seemed as if the governor and his wife were pleased to see him deserting Kittie Fleming, but whether or not this was because they thought the poor orphan Virginia a better match, or for the reason that any new flame would wean him from Kittie I could not say. And I suppose they thought Kittie's encouraging behavior to me was not only a proof of her low tastes, or rather her lack of ambition, but a sure sign to Bob that she was not in his class. So far as I was concerned I was wretched, especially when the younger people began turning the gathering into a "play party."
Now there was a difference between a play party and a kissing party or kissing bee, as we used to call it. The play party was quite respectable, and could be indulged in by church-members. In it the people taking part sang airs each with its own words, and moved about in step to the music. The absence of the fiddle and the "calling off" and the name of dancing took the curse off. They went through figures a lot like dances; swung partners by one hand or both; advanced and retreated, "balanced to partners" bowing and saluting; clasping hands, right and left alternately with those they met; and balanced to places, and the like. Sometimes they had a couple to lead them, as in the dance called the German, of which my granddaughter tells me; but usually they were all supposed to know the way the play went, and the words were always such as to help. Here is the one they started off with that night:
"We come here to bounce around,
We come here to bounce around,
We come here to bounce around,
Tra, la, la!
Ladies, do si do,
Gents, you know,
Swing to the right,
And then to the left,
And all promenade!"
Oh, yes! I have seen Wades and Flemings and Holbrooks and all the rest singing and hopping about to the tune of We Come Here to Bounce Around; and also We'll All Go Down to Rowser; and Hey, Jim Along, Jim Along Josie; and Angelina Do Go Home; and Good-by Susan Jane; and Shoot the Buffalo; and Weevilly Wheat; and Sandy He Belonged to the Mill; and I've Been to the East, I've Been to the West, I've Been to the Jay-Bird's Altar; and Skip-to-My-Lou; and The Juniper Tree; and Go In and Out the Window; and The Jolly Old Miller; and Captain Jinks; and lots more of them. Boyds and Burnses and Smythes tripping the light fantastic with them, and not half a dozen dresses better than alpacas in the crowd, and the men many of them in drilling trousers--and half of them with hayseed in their hair from the load on which they rode to the party! So, ye Iowa aristocracy, put that in your pipes and smoke it, as ye bowl over the country in your automobiles--or your airships, as I suppose it may be before you read this!
I went round with the rest of them, for I had seen all these plays on the canal boats, and had once or twice taken part in them. Kittie Fleming, very graceful and gracious as she bowed to me, and as I swung her around, was my partner. Bob Wade still devoted himself to Virginia, who was like a fairy in her fine pink silk dress.
"This is enough of these plays," shouted Bob at last, after looking about to see that his father and mother were not in the room. "Let's have the 'Needle's Eye'!"
"The 'Needle's Eye'!" was the cry, then.
"I won't play kissing games!" said one or two of the girls.
"Le's have 'The Gay Balonza Man'!" shouted Doctor Bliven, who was in the midst of the gaieties, while his wife too, plunged in as if to outdo him.
"Oh, yes!" she said, smiling up into the face of Frank Finster, with whom she had been playing. "Let's have 'The Gay Balonza Man!' It's such fun[13]!"
[13] One here discovers a curious link between our recent past and olden times in our Old Home, England. This game has like most of the kissing or play-party games of our fathers (and mothers) more than one version. By some it was called "The Gay Galoney Man," by others "The Gay Balonza Man." It is a last vestige of the customs of the sixteenth century and earlier in England. It was brought over by our ancestors, and survived in Iowa at the time of its settlement, and probably persists still in remote localities settled by British immigrants. The "Gay Balonza Man" must be the character--the traveling beggar, pedler or tinker,--who was the hero of country-side people, and of the poem attributed to James V. called The Gaberlunzie-Man (1512-1542) in which the event is summed up in two lines relating to a peasant girl, "She's aff wi the gaberlunzie-man." The words of the play run in part as follows:
The things he was to be cheated of seemed to be osculations.--G.v.d.M."See the gay balonza-man, the charming gay balonza-man;
We'll do all that ever we can,
To cheat the gay balonza-man!"
"See the gay balonza-man, the charming gay balonza-man;
We'll do all that ever we can,
To cheat the gay balonza-man!"
"The Needle's Eye" won, and we formed in a long line of couples--Wades, Finsters, Flemings, Boyds and the rest of the roll of present-day aristocrats, and marched, singing, between a boy and a girl standing on chairs with their hands joined. Here is the song--I can sing the tune to-day:
"The needle's eye,
Which doth supply
The thread which runs so true;
{And many a lass
{Have I let pass
or
{And many a beau
{Have I let go
Because I wanted you!"
At the word "you," the two on the chairs--they were Lizzie Finster and Charley McKim at first--brought their arms down and caught a couple--they caught Kittie and me--who were at that moment passing through between the chairs--which were the needle's eye; and then they sang, giving us room to execute:
"And they bow so neat!
And they kiss so sweet!
We do intend before we end, to have this couple meet!"
Crimson of face, awkward as a calf, I bowed to Kittie and she to me; and then she threw her arms about me and kissed me on the lips. And then I saw her wink slyly at Bob Wade. Then Kittie and I became the needle's eye and she worked it so we caught Bob Wade and Virginia, even though it was necessary to wait a moment after the word "you"--she meant to do it! As Bob's lips met Virginia's I groaned, and turning my back on Kittie Fleming, I rushed out of the room. Judge Stone tried to stop me.