# The Female Prose Writers of America/Ann S. Stephens/The Quilting Party

published in The Female Prose Writers of America
THE QUILTING PARTY.
A three-seated sleigh, gorgeous with yellow paint and gilding, drawn by two horses and a leader, stopped with a dash by the dooryard gate. A troop of girls, cloaked and hooded to the chin, were disengaging themselves from the buffalo-robes and leaping cheerily out on either side, while the driver stood in front, bending backward in a vigorous effort to hold in his horses, which every instant gave a leap and a pull upon the lines, which set the bells a-ringing and the girls a-laughing with a burst of music that went through the old house like a flash of sunshine. The sleigh dashed up the lane in quest of a new load, while the cargo it had just left were busy as so many humming-birds in Julia’s dressing-room. Cloaks were heaped in a pile on the bed, hoods were flung off, and half a dozen bright, smiling faces were peeping at themselves in the glass. Never was an old-fashioned mirror so beset. Flaxen and jetty ringlets, braids of chestnut, brown and ashy gold flashed on its surface—white muslins, rose-coloured crapes, and silks of cerulean blue floated before it like a troop of sunset clouds—eyes glanced in and out like stars reflected in a fountain, and soft, red lips trembled over its surface like rosebuds flung upon the same bright waters.
Again the sleigh dashed up to the gate, and off once more. Then we all gathered to the out room, sat demurely down by the quilt, and began to work in earnest. Such frolic and fun and girlish wit—such peals of silvery laughter as rang through that old house were enough to make the worm-eaten rafters sound again—such a snipping of thread and breaking of needles—such demand for cotton and such graceful rolling of spools across the “rising sun” could only be witnessed in a New England quilting frolic. The fire snapped and blazed with a sort of revel cheerfulness; it danced up and down over the old mirror that hung in a tarnished frame ​site, and every time the pretty girl nearest the hearth-rug lifted the huge tailor’s shears, appropriated to her use, the flame flashed up and played over them till they seemed crusted with jewels. One young lady, with a very sweet voice, sung “I’d be a Butterfly,” with tumultuous applause. Miss Narissa exercised her sharp voice in “I won’t be a Nun,” and two young ladies, who had no places at the quilt, read conversation cards by the fire.
Toward night-fall, Miss Elizabeth, who had hovered about the quilt at intervals all the afternoon, appeared from the middle room and whispered mysteriously to Narissa, who got up and went out. After a few minutes the amiable sisters returned, and with smiling hospitality announced that tea was ready.
The door was flung wide open, and a long table, covered to the carpet with birds-eye diaper, stood triumphantly in view. We moved toward the door, our garments mingling together, and some with linked arms, laughing as they went.
Miss Elizabeth stood at the head of the table, supported by a huge Britannia teapot and conical-shaped sugar-bowl, which had officiated at her grandmother’s wedding supper. She waved her hand with a grace peculiarly her own, and we glided to our chairs, spread out our pocket-handkerchiefs, and waited patiently while Miss Elizabeth held the Britannia teapot in a state of suspension and asked each one separately, in the same sweet tone, if she took sugar and cream. Then there was a travelling of small-sized China cups down the table. As each cup reached its destination, the recipient bathed her spoon in the warm contents, timidly moistened her lips, and waited till her neighbour was served. Then two plates of warm biscuit started an opposition route on each side the board, followed by a train of golden butter, dried beef and sago cheese.
About this time Miss Narissa began to make a commotion among a pile of little glass plates that formed her division of command. Four square dishes of currant jelly, quince preserves, and clarified peaches, were speedily yielding up their contents. The little plates flashed to and fro, up and down, then became stationary, each one gleaming up from the snow-white cloth like a fragment of ice whereon a handful of half-formed rubies had been flung. There ​was a hush in the conversation, the tinkling of tea-spoons, with here and there a deep breath as some rosy lip was bathed in the luscious jellies. After a time the China cups began to circulate around the tea-tray again, conical-shaped loaf cakes became locomotive, from which each guest extracted a triangular slice with becoming gravity. Then followed in quick succession a plate heaped up with tiny heart-shaped cakes, snow-white with frosting and warmly spiced with carraway seed, dark-coloured ginger-nuts and a stack of jumbles, twisted romantically into true lover’s knots and dusted with sugar.
Last of all came the crowning glory of a country tea-table. A plate was placed at the elbow of each lady, where fragments of pie, wedge-shaped and nicely fitted together, formed a beautiful and tempting Mosaic. The ruby tart, golden pumpkin, and yet more delicate custard, mottled over with nutmeg, seemed blended and melting together beneath the tall lights, by this time placed at each end of the table. We had all eaten enough, and it seemed a shame to break the artistical effect of these pie plates. But there sat Miss Elizabeth by one huge candlestick entreating us to make ourselves at home, and there sat Miss Narissa behind the other, protesting that she should feel quite distressed if we left the table without tasting everything upon it. Even while the silver tea-spoons were again in full operation, she regretted in the most pathetic manner the languor of our appetites, persisted that there was nothing before us fit to eat, and when we arose from the table, she continued to expostulate, solemnly affirming that we had not made half a meal, and bemoaned her fate in not being able to supply us with something better, all the way back to the quilting-room.
Lights were sparkling, like stars, around the “rising sun,” but we plied our needles unsteadily and with fluttering hands. One after another of our number dropped off and stole up to the dressing-chamber, while the huge mirror in its tarnished frame seemed laughing in the firelight, and enjoying the frolic mightily as one smiling face after another peeped in, just long enough to leave a picture and away again.
The evening closed in starlight, clear and frosty. Sleigh-bells ​were heard at a distance, and the illuminated snow which lay beneath the windows was peopled with shadows moving over it, as one group after another passed out, anxious to obtain a view up the lane.
A knock at the nearest front door put us to flight. Three young gentlemen entered and found us sitting primly around the quilt, each with a thimble on and earnestly at work, like so many birds in a cherry-tree. Again the knocker resounded through the house, as if the lion’s head that formed it were set to howling by the huge mass of iron belabouring it so unmercifully. Another relay of guests, heralded in by a gush of frosty wind from the entry, was productive of some remarkably long stitches and rather eccentric patterns on the “rising sun,” which, probably, may be pointed out as defects upon its disc to this day. Our fingers became more hopelessly tremulous, for some of the gentlemen bent over us as we worked, and a group gathered before the fire, shutting out the blaze from the huge mirror, which seemed gloomy and discontented at the loss of its old playmate, though a manly form slyly arranging its collar and a masculine hand thrust furtively through a mass of glossy hair did, now and then, glance over its darkened surface.
The lion’s head at the door continued its growls, sleigh-bells jingled in the lane, smiles, and light and half-whispered compliments circulated within doors. Every heart was brim full of pleasurable excitement, and but one thing was requisite to the general happiness—the appearance of Old Ben, dear old black Ben, the village fiddler. Again the lion-knocker gave a single growl, a dying hoarse complaint, as if it were verging from the lion rampant to the lion couchant. All our guests were assembled except the doctor; it must be he or Cousin Rufus, with Old Ben. A half score of sparkling eyes grew brighter. There was a heavy stamping of feet in the entry, which could have arisen from no single person. The door opened, and Cousin Rufus appeared, and beyond him, still in the dusk, stood the fiddler, with a huge bag of green baize in his hand, which rose up and down as the old negro deliberately stamped the snow, first from one heavy boot, then from the other, and, regardless of our eager glances, turned away into ​the supper-room, where a warm mug of gingered cider waited his acceptance.
What a time the fiddler took in drinking his cider! We could fancy him tasting the warm drink, shaking it about in the mug, after every deep draught, and marking its gradual diminution, by the grains of ginger clinging to the inside, with philosophical calmness—all the time chuckling, the old rogue, over the crowd of impatient young creatures waiting his pleasure in the next room.
At length, Cousin Rufus flung open the door leading to the long kitchen, arms were presented, white hands trembling with impatience eagerly clasped over them, and away we went, one and all, so restless for the dance that two-thirds of us took a marching step on the instant.
The old kitchen looked glorious by candlelight. Everywhere the wreathing evergreens flung a chain of tremulous and delicate shadows on the wall. A huge fire roared and flashed in the chimney, till some of the hemlock boughs on either side grew crisp and began to shower their leaves into the flames, which crackled the more loudly as they received them, and darting up sent a stream of light glowing through the upper branches and wove a perfect net-work of shadows on the ceiling overhead. The birds gleamed out beautifully from the deep green, the tall candles glowed in their leafy chandeliers till the smooth laurel leaves and ground pine took more than their natural lustre from the warm light, and the whole room was filled with a rich fruity smell left by the dried apples and frost grapes just removed from the walls.
Old Ben was mounted in his chair, a huge seat which we had tangled over with evergreens. He cast his eye down the columns of dancers with calm self-complacency, took out his fiddle, folded up the green baize satchel, and began snapping the strings with his thumb with a sort of sly smile on his sharp features which, with broken music sent from his old violin, was really too much for patient endurance.
Miss Narissa Daniels led off with the first stamp of old Ben’s foot, and Elizabeth stood pensively by, evidently reluctant to engage herself before the doctor’s arrival; Julia had Cousin Rufus ​for a partner, and I, poor wretch, stood up half pouting with Ebenezer Smith, who distorted his already crooked countenance, with a desperate effort to look interesting, and broke into a disjointed double shuffle every other moment.
The night went on merrily. It seemed as if the warm gingered cider had released the stiffened fingers of our fiddler, for the old-fashioned tunes rung out from his instrument loud and clear, till every nook in the farm-house resounded with them. There was dancing in that long kitchen, let me assure you, reader, hearty, gleeful dancing, where hearts kept time cheerily to the music, and eyes kindled up with a healthier fire than wine can give.
I have been in many a proud assembly since that day, where the great and the beautiful have met to admire and be admired, where lovely women glided gracefully to and fro in the quadrille with so little animation that the flowers in their hands scarcely trembled to the languid motion. But we had another kind of amusement at Julia Daniels’s quilting frolic, and to say truth a better kind—the grace of warm, unstudied, innocent enjoyment, spiced perhaps with a little rustic affectation and coquetry.