"We can't allow you to have it," said the governor, with his jaws set a little closer than usual. "We keep wine for sacramental purposes only."
This proves how straight they were about violating their temperance vows, and how pious. Though there are some lines of poetry in the Fifth Reader which seem to show that the governor missed a real sacrament. They read:
"Who gives himself with his alms feeds three--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me;"
but Governor Wade was a practical man who made his religion fit what he wanted to do, and what he felt was the proper thing. Bob and Jack were worldly, like the rest of us. The governor got the reputation of being a hard man, and the wine incident did a good deal to add to it. The point is that there had to be some other way of entertaining the company at the party, besides drinking, card-playing, or dancing. Of course the older people could discuss the price of land, the county organization and the like; but even the important things of the country were mostly in the hands of young people--and young folks will be young folks.
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!