Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-11-17

Wdlkeu tO lue Idil, ONcL W uIh quitC a number of men were leaning, to see what was going on, and several moved aside to give us room. I didn't like to take their places away, especially as they were laughing and enjoying them selves, and I could hear the sound of dance music coming up from below (such odd sounding musicD, but Mrs. Ess Kay murmured to me that I mustn't refuse American men are never so happy" she said, "as when they're giving up something for a woman. They're used to it."
 And evidently she, as an American woman, was used to taking 1t. She and Mrs. Van der Windt slipped into the vacant spaces with a bare thank you," and I had to follow their exam pie. We peered down over the rail. and there was a sight which would have been comical if 1t hadn't been pathetic.
 On rather rough looking deck, about twelve feet or more below us, a dense crowd was collected around two small squares, which they pur- posely left open. Besides those little squares every inch was occupied. There wouldn't have been any more room for even a baby to sit down than there was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the crowd were old men, young men and boys, all poorly dressed, and old women, young women and girls, big and little. They wore crude, vivid colors, and more than half of them had bright handkerchiefs tied over their heads. They scarcely took any notice of the first class passengers staring down superciliously or plying ly at their poor amusements; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily-I can't say gayly-in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly. pinched little man who looked almost half witted. was monotonously scrap ing a battered fiddle for two solemn couples to dance around and around. always on the same axis. But the other dancing salon. was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat lobster claw for a nose, uniform with big red flannel epaulettes and pasteboard buttons GOV erad with gold paper, was pretending to conduct the band. And what a band it was,
 It consisted of four sailors, rather sheep faced and self conscious One musical instrument was wooden box rigged up with strings and long han dle, another was formed from a cou- pie of huge soup spoons tied together on which the player beat rhythmlcally with a smaller spoon; the third was a poker dangling from a string banged heartily with an enormous nail az it swung to and fro; the fourth was a queer homemade drum, which looked as if it had been made out of a wooden bandbox.
 Somehow they contrived to coax out music of sort, and few young men and girls were solemnly gyrating to it in a way to make you giddy even to watch. When a man thought he had had enough or wanted to dance with another girl, he dropped his partner with alarming suddenness, bowed stiff ly without smile or word and left her It was evidently etiquette not to speak to your partner. At the end of a dance the conductor with the lobster claw nose looked up to our deck, bowling low, with his hand on his heart, and then all the audience leaning over the rail began fumbllng in their pockets If they were men or opening their purses or gold bags If they were women. Down poured a shower of small silver and copper, little boys scrambling to pick 1t up and hand it to the conductor, who would. Mrs. Van der Windt said, divide the money among the members of his quaint band.
 I had a few shillings with me, and I'd been so much amused that I felt like being generous. Luckily mother couldn't see me and scold. took half a dozen coins-shillings and sixpences and, wrapping them hurriedly up in half the cover torn off a magazine I was reading. I aimed the little parcel to fall at the comic conductors feet.
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