fortnight hence as does yours to-day! There promise to be more Frenchmen
in my fields than Germans at St. James. Mr. Gary, if I come to Denbigh
when the peaches are ripe, will you teach me to make persico? Mr. Allen, I
hear that you breed cocks as courageous as those of Tanagra. I shall
borrow from you for a fight that I mean to give. Ladies, for how much gold
will you sell the recipe for that balm of Mecca you must use? There are
dames at Court would come barefoot to Virginia for so dazzling a bloom.
Why do you patch only upon the Whig side of the face? Are you all of one
camp, and does not one of you grow a white rosebush against the 29th of
May? May it please your Majesty the May Queen, I shall watch the sports
from this seat upon your right hand. Egad, the miller quits himself as
though he were the moss-grown fellow of Sherwood Forest!"

The ice had thawed; and by the time the victorious miller had been pushed
forward to receive the smart cocked hat which was the Virginia rendition
of the crown of wild olive, it had quite melted. Conversation became
general, and food was found or made for laughter. When the twelve fiddlers
who succeeded the blacksmith and the miller came trooping upon the green,
they played, one by one, to perhaps as light-hearted a company as a May
Day ever shone upon. All their tunes were gay and lively ones, and the
younger men moved their feet to the music, while a Strephon at the lower
end of the lists seized upon a blooming Chloe, and the two began to dance
"as if," quoth the Colonel, "the musicians were so many tarantula
doctors."

A flower-wreathed instrument of his calling went to the player of the
sprightliest air; after which awardment, the fiddlers, each to the tune of
his own choosing, marched off the green to make room for Pretty Bessee,
her father the beggar, and her suitors the innkeeper, the merchant, the
gentleman, and the knight.