What else is the good of a coherent society and a Government if it cannot
provide you with so rudimentary a thing as a meal?"

Whereat joyfully I undid my belt, and, without nicely examining the
argument, marched into the booth, and there put Martian hospitality to
the test, eating and drinking, but this time with growing wisdom, till
I was a new man, and then, paying my leaving with a wave of the hand to
the yellow-girted one who dispensed the common provender, I sauntered on
again, caring little or nothing which way the road went, and soon across
the current of my meditations a peal of laughter broke, accompanied by
the piping of a flute somewhere close at hand, and the next minute I
found myself amid a ring of light-hearted roisterers who were linking
hands for a dance to the music a curly-headed fellow was making close by.

They made me join them! One rosey-faced damsel at the hither end of
the chain drew up to me, and, without a word, slipped her soft, baby
fingers into my hand; on the other side another came with melting eyes,
breath like a bed of violets, and banked-up fun puckering her dainty
mouth. What could I do but give her a hand as well? The flute began
to gurgle anew, like a drinking spout in spring-time, and away we went,
faster and faster each minute, the boys and girls swinging themselves
in time to the tune, and capering presently till their tender feet
were twinkling over the ground in gay confusion. Faster and faster
till, as the infection of the dance spread even to the outside groups,
I capered too. My word! if they could have seen me that night from the
deck of the old Carolina, how they would have laughed--sword swinging,
coat-tails flying--faster and faster, round and round we went, till
limbs could stand no more; the gasping piper blew himself quite out,
and the dance ended as abruptly as it commenced, the dancers melting
away to join others or casting themselves panting on the turf.