They want to know if you ever keep Christmas in your
country without a dance."
"Never, sah," said poor Caesar.
"Do they dance without music?"
"No, sah; never."
"Go, then," I said, in my sternest accents,--"go
fetch a zithern, or a banjo, or a kit, or a hurdy-gurdy,
or a fiddle."
The black boy went, and returned with his violin.
And as the light grew gray, and crept into the darkness,
and as the darkness gathered more thick and more, he
played for us, and he played for us, tune after tune; and
we danced--first with precision, then in sport, then in
wild holiday frenzy. We began with waltzes--so great is
the convenience of travelling with your wives--where
should we have been, had we been all sole alone, four
men? Probably playing whist or euchre. And now we began
with waltzes, which passed into polkas, which subsided
into other round dances; and then in very exhaustion we
fell back in a grave quadrille. I danced with Hosanna;
Wolfgang and Sarah were our vis-a-vis. We went
through the same set that Noah and his three boys danced
in the ark with their four wives, and which has been
danced ever since, in every moment, on one or another
spot of the dry earth, going round it with the sun, like
the drum-beat of England--right and left, first two
forward, right hand across, pastorale--the whole
series of them; we did them with as much spirit as if it
had been on a flat on the side of Ararat, ground yet too
muddy for croquet.
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