The Argosy — page 84: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

At a German Silver Wedding. 73 on, and assurances that if I found Jacob lingering on the road, or too inquisitively regarding the Redan Kuchen (“packed in three papers, I give you my word!” said Frau Bartles), I would give him a good shaking ! However, for this there was no need; the poor fellow, a shambling, loose-made boy, of about seventeen, was trundling along the road obediently enough, with the cake on a tray on his shoulder, and only stopping every now and then to fling a pebble at the storks that were picking up their evening meal in the ditches alongside. Big storks and little storks, they are a queer, amusing sight. The young begin to leave the nest about the middle of June, and follow their sturdy old fathers to the ponds and marshy grounds where they find their most succulent food. Sometimes the parent stork stands in the midst of a little excited group of children, waving aloft in his bill a particularly desirable eft or blindworm, and then swallows it himself with a gulp which sadly disappoints all his expectant family. . But I am as bad as Jacob, lingering thus on the road, and must return to the silver wedding, of which I later saw a little more. About nine o’clock the Countess allowed me to return to the village, accompanied by Julius, the Count’s old servant, who had previously ascertained that the meal, at the beginning of which I had assisted, was at an end at last, and the dance of the ‘“ Grandfather ” about to commence. When I took my stand in a ccorner of the baker’s big hall, from which the guests had cleared the long tables, I was the only person in the room unprovided with a partner, always excepting the wickel- kind, who still hung on the peg behind the door, staring at the scene with sleepy eyes. I with difficulty resisted the persuasions of Julie to join the dance. She even offered me her own betrothed as a partner, declaring that Johann would teach me, and she would take old Julius from the Schloss instead ; but I spared Corporal Johann his disappointment by declaring that I should never be able to achieve a strange national dance without previous practice. About forty couples were by this time formed in procession, and _they marched slowly round the hall, headed by the baker and his wife, who sang, in a gruff and squeaky duet, the following couplet : ‘When the grandfather first with the grandmother wed, His hair was quite curly, his cheeks were quite red.”’ This was taken up in chorus by the company, and then, as it con- cluded, all the couples broke into a lively waltz, and danced, as all Germans, of whatever age or class, can, with great spirit for some minutes. Suddenly, the procession re-forming, the first pair sang something of this sort : “The grandmother, too, who was only eighteen, Was as pretty a maiden as ever was seen ;’’ and again the waltz succeeded. CON @ LOOOKS (CO)