Then Blatchford called for
"Virginia Reel," and we raced and chased through that.
Poor Caesar began to get exhausted, but a little flip
from downstairs helped him amazingly. And after the flip
Dick cried, "Can you not dance `Money-Musk'?" And in one
wild frenzy of delight we danced "Money-Musk" and "Hull's
Victory" and "Dusty Miller" and "Youth's Companion," and
"Irish jigs" on the closet-door lifted off for the
occasion, till the men lay on the floor screaming with
the fun, and the women fell back on the sofas, fairly
faint with laughing.
All this last, since the sentence after "Circassia,"
is a mistake. There was not any bell, nor any barber,
and we did not dance at all. This was all a slip of my
memory.
What we really did was this:
John Blatchford said, "Let us all tell stories." It
was growing dark and he put more logs on the fire.
Bertha said,--
"Heap on more wood, the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our merry Christmas still."
She said that because it was in "Bertha's Visit,"--a
very stupid book, which she remembered.
Then Wolfgang told
THE PENNY-A-LINER'S STORY
[Wolfgang is a reporter, or was then, on the staff of
the "Star."]
When I was on the "Tribune" [he never was on the
"Tribune" an hour, unless he calls selling the "Tribune"
at Fort Plains being on the "Tribune.
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