But Silas Foster, who leaned against a tree
near by, in his customary blue frock and smoking a short pipe, did
more to disenchant the scene, with his look of shrewd, acrid, Yankee
observation, than twenty witches and necromancers could have done in
the way of rendering it weird and fantastic.
A little farther off, some old-fashioned skinkers and drawers, all
with portentously red noses, were spreading a banquet on the
leaf-strewn earth; while a horned and long-tailed gentleman (in whom
I recognized the fiendish musician erst seen by Tam O'Shanter) tuned
his fiddle, and summoned the whole motley rout to a dance, before
partaking of the festal cheer. So they joined hands in a circle,
whirling round so swiftly, so madly, and so merrily, in time and tune
with the Satanic music, that their separate incongruities were
blended all together, and they became a kind of entanglement that
went nigh to turn one's brain with merely looking at it. Anon they
stopt all of a sudden, and staring at one another's figures, set up a
roar of laughter; whereat a shower of the September leaves (which,
all day long, had been hesitating whether to fall or no) were shaken
off by the movement of the air, and came eddying down upon the
revellers.
Then, for lack of breath, ensued a silence, at the deepest point of
which, tickled by the oddity of surprising my grave associates in
this masquerading trim, I could not possibly refrain from a burst of
laughter on my own separate account;
"Hush!" I heard the pretty gypsy fortuneteller say.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254