A Shooting Match 123 



Circle and everybody in the language of the caller- 

 off ''took a dance." There were no wall-flowers 

 at those old-time social events and the dances all 

 had corners on them — square dances, you know. 



If you have read Bret Harte you will recall that 

 exquisite poem entitled, "Her Letter," in which 

 the "Lily of Poverty Flat" describes a dance she 

 attended in the days of the forty-niners in Cali- 

 fornia. An incident of that historic occasion, in- 

 delibly fixed in her mind, is conveyed in the lines : 



* *'The night that I danced down the middle 

 With the man that shot Sandy McGee." 



Some of these fair country girls — the belles of 

 shooting-match dances — doubtless, yet recall, with 

 pleasurable memory, occasions when they danced 

 down the middle or gave hand in grand right and 

 left, or promenaded, swung, or sat out the dance 

 in some secluded corner with the champion 'coon 

 or squirrel hunter of the district. 



HELD UP A DANCE FOE A CHAW 



Some of those country dancers, the boys I mean, 

 of course, were terribly violent — that is, they hit 

 the lumber with their leathers till the windows 

 rattled. I've heard it, too, but only a legend, that 

 during the progress of a dance it was not unusual, 

 in the away back period, for some youthful dancer 

 to hold up a grand left and right movement until 



