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:

"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 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!"

"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!"