r heels, but had not floors big enough for the shaking. So
in green shade, at some springside they built an arbor of green boughs,
leveled the earth underneath, pounded it hard and smooth, then covered
it an inch deep with clean wheat bran, put up seats roundabout it, also
a fiddlers' stand, got the fiddlers, printed invitations which went far
and wide to women young and old, saw to a sufficiency of barbecue,
depended on the Lord and the ladies for other things--and prepared to
dance, dance from nine in the morning until two next morning. Men were
not specifically invited--anybody in good standing with a clean shirt,
dancing shoes, a good horse and a pedigree, was heartily welcome. The
solid men, whose names appeared as managers, paid scot for
everything--they left the actual arrangements to the lads. But they came
in shoals to the bran-dances, and were audacious enough often to take
away from some youth fathoms deep in love, his favorite partner.
Sometimes, too, a lot of them pre-empted all the prettiest girls, and
danced a special set with them. Thus were they delivered into the hands
of the oppressed--the lads made treaty with the fiddlers and prompter to
play fast and furious--to call figures that kept the oldsters wheeling
and whirling. It was an endurance contest--but victory did not always
perch with the youths. Plenty of pursy gentlemen were still light enough
on their feet, clear enough in their wind, to dance through Money Musk
double, Chicken in the Bread Tray, and the Arkansaw Traveller, no matter
what the time.

All dances were square--quadrilles and cotillions. The Basket Cotillion
was indeed, looked upon as rather daring. You see, at the last, the ring
of men linked by hand-hold outside a ring of their partners, lifted
locked arms over their partners' heads, and thus interwoven, the circle
balanced before breaking up. Other times, other dances--ours is now the
day of the trot and the tango. But they lack the life, the verve of the
old dances, the old tunes. To this day when I hear them, my feet patter
in spite of me. You could not dance to them steadily, with soft airs
blowing all about, leaves flittering in sunshine, and water rippling
near, without getting an appetite commensurate to the feasts in wait for
you.

One basket from a plantation sufficed for bran-dances ending at
sundown--those running on past midnight demanded two. It would never do
to offer snippets and fragments for supper. Barbecue, if