A mountaineer, who is to take this queer record to the post-office, is waiting for me, and I must close,—hoping that the country pictures I have endeavoured to sketch may have a tendency to make my reader feel a portion of that joy, which has characterized this delightful Spring Day.
The people who inhabit that section of country lying between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River, are undoubtedly the legitimate descendants of the far-famed Rip Van Winkle. Dutch blood floweth in their veins, and their names, appearance, manners, are all Dutch, and Dutch only. The majority of them are engaged in tilling the soil, and as they seem to be satisfied with a bare competency, the peacefulness of their lives is only equalled by their ignorance of books, and the world at large. The height of their ambition is to enjoy a frolic, and what civilized people understand by that term, they designate a Bee. Not only have they their wedding and funeral Bees, but they commemorate their agricultural labours with a Bee, and of these, the Corn-Planting Bee, which I am about to describe, is a fair specimen.
A certain old Dutchman of my acquaintance had so long neglected the field where he intended to plant his corn, that he found it necessary to retrieve his reputation by getting up a Bee. He therefore immediately issued his verbal invitations, and at two o’clock on the appointed day, about seventy of his neighbours, including men and women, made their appearance at his dwelling, each one of them furnished with a hoe and a small bag to carry the seed. After supplying his guests with all they wanted in the way of spiritual drink, my friend gave the signal, and shouldering a large hoe started off for the field of action, closely followed by his neighbours, who fell to work lustily. The field was large, but as the planters were numerous, it was entirely planted at least two hours before sunset, when the party was disbanded, with the express understanding resting upon their minds that they should invite their children to the dance, which was to take place in the evening at the Bee-giver’s residence.
The house of my farmer friend having been originally built for a tavern, it happened to contain a large ball-room, and on this occasion it was stripped of its beds and bedding, and the walls thereof decked from top to bottom with green branches and an occasional tallow candle, and conspicuous at one end of the hall was a refreshment establishment, well supplied with pies, gingerbread, molasses, candy and cigars, with an abundance of coloured alcohols.