"Allemande Joe! Eight hand to pardner and around you go! Balance to corners, don't be slack! Turn right around and take a back track! When you git home, don't be afraid. Swing her agin and all promenade!"
It was a glorious dance and it moved unflaggingly to the end; but when it was done and the dancers laughing and exhausted sought their seats, it was discovered that Snake River Jim had fallen to weeping because he said it was his unhappy lot to work while others danced.
Therefore Sylvanus Starr suggested that out of a delicate regard for an artist's feelings, and no one could deny but Snake River Jim was that, the dance be temporarily suspended while the bridegroom and others expressed their sentiments and delight in the occasion by a few remarks, Sylvanus Starr himself setting the example by bursting into an eulogy which had the impassioned fervor of inspiration.
The vocabulary of laudatory adjectives gleaned in many years' experience in the obituary department of an eastern newspaper were ejected like volcanic matter, red hot and unrestrained, running over and around the name of Symes to harden into sentences of which "a magnificent specimen of manhood, a physical and intellectual giant, gallantly snatching from our midst the fairest flower that ever bloomed upon a desert waste," only moderately illustrates the editor's gift of language.
When Andy P. Symes stood on a chair and faced the expectant throng the few trite remarks which he had in mind all but fled when his eyes fell for the first time upon his bride buttoned into her "going away gown." As he mounted the chair his face wore the set smile of the man who means to die a nervy death on the gallows. His voice sounded strained and unnatural to himself as he began:
"Ladies and gentlemen."
"Wee-hee!" squealed a youth in a leather collar and a rattleskin necktie.
"This is the happiest moment of my life!"
"Wee-ough! It ought to be!" yelled the "Sheep King of Poison Crick" as he pressed the arms of the Misses Starr gently and impartially against his sides.
"Also the proudest moment." He looked at his bride, noting that she wore a broach which might have belonged on a set of harness.