A Few Hurried Words By The
Clergyman, A Few Bashful Replies From The Young
People, And The Two Were Made One.
The crowd
rushed outside of the house, where a general
scramble took place among the boys for their
girls.
Then a procession was formed, headed
by the clergyman, which marched along the
sandy road to another house in the woods, where
the second marriage was to be celebrated.
It was amusing to see the young men dash
away from the procession, to run to the village store
for candy at twenty-five cents per pound,
containing as much terra alba (white clay) as sugar.
With well-filled pockets they would run back to
the procession and fill the girls' aprons with the
sweets, soon repeating the process, and
showering upon the fair ones cakes, raisins, nuts, and
oranges. The only young man who seemed to
find no favor in any woman's eyes invested
more capital in sweetmeats than the others; and
though every girl in the procession gave him a
sharp word or a kick as he passed, yet none
refused his candies as he tossed them at the
maidens, or stuffed them into the pockets of their
dresses.
The second ceremony was performed in about
three minutes, and the preacher feeling faint from
his long ride through the woods, declared he must
have some supper. So, while he was being
served, the girls chatted together, the old ladies
helped each other to snuff with little wooden
paddles, which were left protruding from one corner
of their mouths after they had taken "a dip,"
as they called it. The boys, after learning that
the preacher had postponed the third marriage
for an hour, with a wild shout scampered off
to Stewart's store for more candies. I took
advantage of the interim to inquire how it was
that the young ladies and gentlemen were upon
such terms of pleasant intimacy.
"Well, captain," replied the person
interrogated, "you sees we is all growed up together,
and brotherly love and sisterly affection is our
teaching. The brethren love the sisteren; and
they say that love begets love, so the sisteren
loves the brethren. It's parfecly nateral. That's
the hull story, captain. How is it up your way?"
At last the preacher declared himself satisfied
with all he had eaten, and that enough was as
good as a feast; so the young people fell into line,
and we trudged to the third house, where, with
the same dispatch, the third couple were united.
Then the fiddler scraped the strings of his
instrument, and a double-shuffle dance commenced.
The girls stamped and moved their feet about in
the same manner as the men. Soon four or five
of the young ladies left the dancing-party, and
seated themselves in a corner, pouting
discontentedly. My companion explained to me that
the deserters were a little stuck-up, having
made two or three visits on a schooner to the
city (Newbern), where they had other ways
of dancing, and where the folks didn't think
it pretty for a girl to strike her heels upon the
floor, &c.
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