----A great party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind
of solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,--its
spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of
every-day family-life,--it is such a formidable matter to break in the
raw subordinates to the _manege_ of the cloak-room and the
table,--there is such a terrible uncertainty in the results of
unfamiliar culinary operations,--so many feuds are involved in drawing
that fatal line which divides the invited from the uninvited fraction
of the local universe,--that, if the notes requested the pleasure of
the guests' company on "this solemn occasion," they would pretty nearly
express the true state of things.
The Colonel himself had been pressed into the service. He had pounded
something in the great mortar. He had agitated a quantity of sweetened
and thickened milk in what was called a cream-freezer. At eleven
o'clock, A.M., he retired for a space. On returning, his color was
noted to be somewhat heightened, and he showed a disposition to be
jocular with the female help,--which tendency, displaying itself in
livelier demonstrations than were approved at head-quarters, led to his
being detailed to out-of-door duties, such as raking gravel, arranging
places for horses to be hitched to, and assisting in the construction
of an arch of wintergreen at the porch of the mansion.
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