"You'll be at the hop to-night, I hope, Miss
Wilder," he observed, introducing a topic suited
to a young lady's mental capacity.
"Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of
my life, next to husking and making hay"; and
Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much
to the edification of a pair of old gentlemen,
serenely taking their first constitutional."
"Making what? " cried Mr. Joe, poking after
her.
"Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the
world,--and better exercise, my mother says, for
soul and body, than dancing till dawn in crowded
rooms, with everything in a state of unnatural
excitement. If one wants real merriment, let him go
into a new-mown field, where all the air is full of
summer odors, where wild-flowers nod along the
walls, where blackbirds make finer music than any
band, and sun and wind and cheery voices do their
part, while windrows rise, and great loads go
rumbling through the lanes with merry brown faces
atop. Yes, much as I like dancing, it is not to be
compared with that; for in the one case we shut
out the lovely world, and in the other we become
a part of it, till by its magic labor turns to poetry,
and we harvest something better than dried buttercups
and grass.
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