Late in October there was sudden illness at a friend’s house. Every nurse in town was busy already, and we drove out to see if we could get Marcia Watson, at Watson’s Hill. Marcia is not a graduate nurse, but she knows what a sick woman wants, and what a sick household, paralyzed by the illness of its head, must have, and can set the whole stricken machinery in order again. She is a tiny creature, as merry as a squirrel, with quick, tranquil ways.
The Watson’s Hill district is six miles east of us. The Hill is a beech-wooded ridge, rocky through its whole length, and curving almost enough to suggest an amphitheatre. A good farming region lies spread out below it, and there is a village nucleus, a store, the Grange Hall, and a meeting-house. The hall was burnt, two years ago, and the whole neighborhood set to work to rebuild it. They had fifteen-cent entertainments and peanut parties, and sales of aprons and cooked food. The men did the building, giving their time, and the women cooked for the men, and this fall the last shingle of the substantial new building was laid.
The only mill for many miles is the corn-cannery. Corn-husking always brings farm neighbors together; sweet corn, for canning, is husked in August, fodder corn in late October. Families come to husk for each other, and the wide barn floors where they sit are piled high with husks; but in the districts near a cannery, as here, the whole community gathers. In good weather the work is all done out of doors, and the laughing and chatting groups, men, women, and children, sit up to their waists in husks. The stoves and kitchens of neighbors are all pre-empted, and the women bake and fry, and come bustling out to the workers with milk, bread and cheese, pies and doughnuts.
Here, at Watson’s Hill, as at nearly every farm village in our part of the world, the neighbors meet for the weekly dance, which is as much a matter of course as church on Sundays. It would be hard to describe adequately the friendliness and complete sociableness of these neighborhood gatherings. Old and middle-aged and young are called by their first names, and everybody dances; not round dances, but the beautiful old country dances, which, transplanted over seas and carried down a century, still show their quality, and keep something of the courtly nature of the great houses in France and England where they had their stately beginnings: a quality that gives a certain true social training. Everyone in the hall is truly in company. Hands must be given and glances met, all round the dance, and awkwardness and shyness are quickly danced out of existence.
We have the Lancers, the Tempest, the Lady of the Lake, and various quadrilles. They cannot now perhaps be called exactly stately.
“Balance to partners!” calls out old Abel Tarbox, master of ceremonies of the Grange Hall, as he fiddles.
“Balance to partner! Swing the same! All sashy!” And then comes the splendid romp of,
“Eight hands round!” and “Eight hands down the middle!”
Besides the old court dances, there are Pop Goes the Weasel, Money Musk, Hull’s Victory, and others, pretty, intricate frolics, which in their day were the dernier cri of fashion, danced by gilded youth in great cities, velvet coat and ruffles, flowered silk petticoat, and spangled fan.
The Chorus Jig is very difficult. It has “contra-corners,” and other mysteries impossible to uninitiated feet.