Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-03-30

DlOuRlb vi Jilc stiiSe at Tic eHIeTIa1nU1eDI.
as you will observe from the programme
| send you. In the number of languages
spoken by the people here they excel us.
We talk one: and English is good enough
to talk with one who understands it. Sup
pose we chance to meet those who don't
speak English. or as it is called here
American, what then?
This literary society comprises about
ninety of the best families of the place:
Dutch, Spanish. Normans, Jews, etc.
Together with the free entertainment to
which strangers are especially invited,
free beer, wine post cafe, mint iulep, etc.,
are all on the list, or if one should be so
peculiarly constituted as to prefer water
it could of course be obtained, but with
much more difficulty.
The most amusing thing that tumbled
under my observation was a native dance
which the captain and myself attended on
our way to the Caracas" at the close of
the literary entertainment, about | 80 p.
m. L don't mean to say we took part
in the dance. In fact we didn't 90 but to
the door of the room in which it was
held, though everybody, particularly
stranger, is welcome to enter. We would
have gone right into the room, but to be
candid, the air was too thick and the odor
trifle too solid to attempt to penetrate it.
Moreover, we had no mdchete to cut our
way into it.
We simply stood at the door and looked
at the dancers and the orchestra. The
room was just fifteen by thirteen feet and
five inches. like to be accurate in state
ment. Apparently rather dimly lighted.
Yet it might be there was more than
observation-disclosures. 1t might have
been brilliantly illuminated. | wouldn't
like TO say it was not. The seeming dim
ness might have been a result of the alb
SorptiOn of Il part of the light by the
thirty-one dark figures doing the dance.
The thirty and one were all moving at
the same time. Not with extraordinary
activity. They are not built that way.
That they were in motion, however. was
"A clear case, for they had the appearance
of having taken yapor bath: and sever
al drops of dark colored fluid. ! noticed.
were pursuing one another on their shiny
face. This | took to be colored prespir-
alton. The captain thought so, too. Then
the limpsey lassitude their garments
seemed to have. also, was an evidence of
the movement of the dancers. Their gar
ments in point of cingibiity to the body
where they touched the body, and defect
Utility where they didn't touch it, must
have been modelled after Ocean Grove.
Long Branch and other seaside bathers.
Whether the dancers were trying to keep
time with the orchestra or the orchestra
with the dancers, still remains with me
an unsolved problem. They pushed and
pulled and glded and swayed, now for
ward, now backward, with body now
bending to the right, now to the left now
a double rotary motion. now horizontal,
again a VERTICAL till one would think they
had been put out of shape and were max
/ 4 .,.N
little wailing shrek now and then from
some of the female performers confirmed
my opinion that was what they were do
ing and the effort to do it hurt them.
But the orchestra. To describe it per-
fectly is-well, is simply impossible.
One of the instruments resembled very
much a Lake Champlain ferry boat horn
with any number of cracks blown into it.
\ triangle located on large box and
struck much after the fashion an anvil is
struck by "a couple of stalwart black
smiths, played all the parts with noise
that words can't express. \ bass drum
made of Il good-sized beer key with Il bill
ly-goat skin tackled on one end was part
of the orchestra also. \ violin whose
musical sounds mace you think of back
yard cat convention on a starry night.
/ One prodigious fellow. built on the
]
of Pennsylvania coal mine, with foot
shaped something like the foot of Mt.
Marcy, Il mouth not larger than Broad
way bObtail car and breath that recall
ed the New Jersey phosphate works
without an effort on your part well. this
fellow played on three instruments at one
and the same time. The instruments
were such rs are unknown in the L. s., |
believe. They are called, in the Papie-
mento language, which was the language
of the natives there assembled, shaliy-
shaky, scratchy-scratchy and scutfy-
scutfy.
Though listened with the closest at
tention - holding my breath as long
as possible: this was necessity,
but not as you may suppose for the pur-
pose of closer attention. could not dis
| tinguish the tones of the shaky-shaky
from the scratchy-scratchy or the scutfy-
scuffy from either of the other two.
| Whereupon Capt. Hopkins, when | told
him of my inability TO distinguish the di-
atonics of those three different weapons
of the orchestra, quietly but very unkind-
/ " remarked. had no ear for music. |
made up my mind to one thing, however,
that the chrstener of these three diatOn-
/ c tools seemed to know ''what's in a
name"
Just as the ebony structure of ditfuse
music called for the rails del Cdpitdn Hop
kiRs to take the pavement, which became
moderately humid from colored transpira-
ton. the captain. who is a tender-hearted
man. suggested that we withdraw from the
place. as he could not bear to witness his
favorte waltz suffer at the feet of those
dancers. And as the gun on the old
Dutch fort, overlooking the town, an
nOunced the hour of midnight, beneath