Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1895 — MERRY HOP-PICKERS. [ARTICLE]

MERRY HOP-PICKERS.

Picturesque Dance in a Washington Hop Field. In the article, “In a Washington Hop Field,” by Louise Herrick Wall, in the Atlantic, a hop-pickers’ dance is described: On a platform of unplaned boards, raised a foot or two from the ground, they were dancing—a tangle of figures seen indistinctly by the glimmer of a few lanterns that stood near the rough benches running around the four sides of the floor. These seats were given over to the women; and the men stood on the ground, pressing, four or five rows deep, about the platform. As we worked our way in among the spectators, a man in shirt sleeves was calling the figures of the square dance“with great energy. He seemed to be master of ceremonies, and took the most unselfish delight ’n finding partners for the unmated. Now and then, when the banjo and fiddle rose into a particularly irresistible tune, a man would break 'through the crowd, leap upon the platform, and search out a partner from among the women. It mattered little, in the dim light, whether she had simply added a white apron to her working dress, or if she were one of the young girls in cashmere and cotton lace finery. In the fiddler I recognized the father of the baby hop picker. I had divined that there was something of the artist in the young fellow ; and now, as he sat with his hat pushed back, legs crossed, and cheek laid on the fiddle, playing for himself and to the others, he made a delightful figure of happy abandon. Close at his knee sat the baby, perfectly erect, a thin black shawl drawn tightly over its head and wrapped around the body, bambinowise. holding the arms down. The tiny pale face and large eyes turned always toward the mother, who danced unceasingly. The music changed, and the master of ceremonies called aloud, “Take your partners for a quad—rille!” The square dance was really a dance as the hop pickers conceived it. The men, their broad soft hats tipped over one ear, took the hands of their partners, and went through a series of bewildering side steps and flourishes that varied in the different dancers from grace to clownish grotesquerie. The terpsichorean director had called the figures alone, in a powerful voice; but suddenly all the dancers took up the refrain in a chanting measure: “Lady ’round the gent, and the gent so-lo; Lady ’round the lady, and the gent don’t go.” This figure continued long enough to fasten the sing-song in the memory for a lifetime. Dance followed dance; the women lifted their aprons and wiped their faces, to the wonder of chill bystanders, and danced again. The boards of the floor creaked, the fiddle and banjo thrilled and screamed, a few fell away from the press about the platform ; but the tramp of feet beat with a ceaseless pulse. The little black figure at the fiddler’s knee sat silent, with wide eyes. A young fellow, who ha I not missed a dance since our coining, threw up his hetid and cried. *'What's tire -matter wi th the roof ?” Then, as all eyes turned up to the' solemn dark of the starpierced sky, “Why, the roof’s all right!” It was pleasant, in thequietof our little room in the shanfty. to drowse upon the hay, and let the aroma of the day float back to us; the bouquet of a coarse draught, perhaps, and yet from nature’s source.