The women gathered to "assist"
the hostesses who kept "Open House"; and the carefree men, dandified
and perfumed, went about in sleighs, or in carriages and ponderous
"hacks," going from Open House to Open House, leaving fantastic cards
in fancy baskets as they entered each doorway, and emerging a little
later, more carefree than ever, if the punch had been to their liking.
It always was, and, as the afternoon wore on, pedestrians saw great
gesturing and waving of skin-tight lemon gloves, while ruinous
fragments of song were dropped behind as the carriages rolled up and
down the streets.
"Keeping Open House" was a merry custom; it has gone, like the all-day
picnic in the woods, and like that prettiest of all vanished customs,
the serenade. When a lively girl visited the town she did not long go
unserenaded, though a visitor was not indeed needed to excuse a
serenade. Of a summer night, young men would bring an orchestra under
a pretty girl's window--or, it might be, her father's, or that of an
ailing maiden aunt--and flute, harp, fiddle, 'cello, cornet, and bass
viol would presently release to the dulcet stars such melodies as sing
through "You'll Remember Me," "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls,"
"Silver Threads Among the Gold," "Kathleen Mavourneen," or "The
Soldier's Farewell.
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