“Not wanting to miss the overture, I went early. The house was unusually large and had one room, with a bed in each corner. Quite a number of strapping boys and girls had collected, and everything bore the aspect of a funeral. The Kickers were ranged around on chairs with that owlish silence that goes with awkwardness and having nothing to say. Presently one of the girls whispered something to another girl near by her, and they slipped out by the back door, and then every girl in the house broke for the door like a lot of sheep going through a gap in the fence. Then the masculine tongue broke loose and Babel reigned, until a few minutes later, when the girls came in, and the funeral was resumed. I sat in one corner with my chair tilted back, taking observations, when not engaged in fighting off a human gad-fly who was pestering me with questions of national politics.
“Presently the old woman said they might as well begin. If there was silence before, pandemonium broke loose now, and everybody was electrified. The old man went out on the porch and rolled in a web of coarse woolen fabric, containing a hundred yards or more, and unrolled it in a loose pile on the floor. Then the boys and girls took off their shoes and stockings. The boys rolled up their pantaloons as far as they could get them, while they arranged fourteen chairs in a circle in the middle of the floor, with the pile of goods in the center. The old woman, who looked for all the world like one of the witches in Macbeth, poured gourdfull after gourdfull of hot water on the material, until it was soaking wet, and then daubed soft soap with a liberal hand over the whole.
“Then the Kickers sat down, boys and girls alternating. The girls gathered up their skirts and sat down on them. They had a bed-cord, with the ends tied so that when the Kickers were seated they could grasp this rope, which was passed around from hand to hand, and hold on while they kicked.
“Everybody now was talking at once, and the confusion was that of a madhouse. The gad-fly yelled at me that if ‘Pennsylvany went Dimmycratic it was all gone to the dogs’—and the kicking began.
“It will be seen that it required constant and vigorous attention to business, pounding that sloppy mass of woolen with bare feet, until everything rattled, to keep it from being kicked over on those who were disposed to be slow. Twenty-eight naked feet would be kicking into the pile with all the rapidity and strength their owners possessed, while the soapsuds flew up to the rafters.
“Everybody laughed, and yelled, and screamed, and kicked till their faces grew red and their eyes fairly stood out in their heads. The floor grew as slippery as soap and water could make it, and every now and then some chair would slip and its occupant sit down suddenly on the floor, and, holding on to the rope, would pull the whole crowd over in a floundering, laughing, yelling pile.
“Then everybody would pant and take a rest and sit down again. The girls would hitch up their impedimenta to a safer distance, and the performance would begin all over again, and thus with relays for two hours. Only one accident occurred. There was one big fat girl they called Loweezy, who looked like a human featherbed with a string tied around it. Louisa was doing her level best to kick the pile over on her opposite, and had gathered both feet and let fly like a pile-driver, and was about to repeat the operation, when, at the critical moment, her chair shot out backward and Louisa sat down in a puddle of soapsuds, with what Augusta Evans in one of her novels calls a sound like the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. What little breath was in her was knocked out, and it was unknown for a brief space whether it would ever get back. But she got up, and was duly escorted by her female companions to the back porch for needed repairs. The old man threw a few more pine-knots on the fire, and Louisa returned and spread herself before the cheerful blaze in a manner calculated to do the most good. Then when everybody was tired out the work was pronounced completed, the wreck was cleaned off the floor, and supper prepared.”
HE WARNED HER
Last summer the congregation of a little kirk in the highlands of Scotland was greatly disturbed and mystified by the appearance in its midst of an old English lady, who made use of an ear trumpet during the sermon, such an instrument being entirely unknown in those simple parts. There was much discussion of the matter, and it was finally decided that one of the elders, who had great local reputation as a man of parts, should be deputed to settle the question. On the next Sabbath the unconscious offender again made her appearance and again produced the trumpet, whereupon the chosen elder rose from his seat and marched down the aisle to where the old lady sat, and, entreating her with an upraised finger, said sternly: “The first toot an’ ye’re oot!”