--The Master cut in just here--I had sprung the trap of a reminiscence.
--When I was a boy,--he said,--some of the mothers in our small town, who
meant that their children should know what was what as well as other
people's children, laid their heads together and got a dancing-master to
come out from the city and give instruction at a few dollars a quarter to
the young folks of condition in the village. Some of their husbands were
ministers and some were deacons, but the mothers knew what they were
about, and they did n't see any reason why ministers' and deacons' wives'
children shouldn't have as easy manners as the sons and daughters of
Belial. So, as I tell you, they got a dancing-master to come out to our
place,--a man of good repute, a most respectable man,--madam (to the
Landlady), you must remember the worthy old citizen, in his advanced age,
going about the streets, a most gentlemanly bundle of infirmities,--only
he always cocked his hat a little too much on one side, as they do here
and there along the Connecticut River, and sometimes on our city
sidewalks, when they've got a new beaver; they got him, I say, to give us
boys and girls lessons in dancing and deportment. He was as gray and as
lively as a squirrel, as I remember him, and used to spring up in the air
and "cross his feet," as we called it, three times before he came down.
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