"It is 'a potent agent for intoxication' when brewed by the Reverend
Mr. Goodloe, and here's where I run, both physically and mentally," I
said to myself as I ran down the steps and out to the two cars that
stood honking impatiently by the gate.
I don't think I ever enjoyed a dance more, and I am sure that my
pleasure was partly due to the wild spirits of the religiously released
who were having the first joy fling for six months.
"I'll not get enough until I wilt upon the floor and have to be carried
out," said Billy, as he held me closer and slid two steps to the right
and then back to get me out of the way of Hampton and Harriet Henderson,
who were dancing with regardless joy.
"Will you feel that way about church next Sunday?" I asked him, but my
demand made no apparent dent, for he danced on without answering.
At an hour after that of midnight the revelers came home and left me at
my gate, by request, to walk alone in the brilliant spring moonlight
through my garden to the wide door back of the white pillars. After they
had seen me safely started, they glided away and I stood on the steps
and watched Nell and Mark reclaim their family from a tall dark figure
that carried out two loads to the parental arms. Then the hush that
comes upon the world in the midnight hours fell over the Poplars and I
stood leaning against one of the tall pillars and reveled in it.
Goodloets is one of the tradition-grayed old towns that are rooted deep
in the Harpeth Valley since the days of the Colonies, and in it can be
found perhaps the purest Americanism on the American continent. The
Poplars, under whose broad roof I made the seventh generation nested and
fledged, spreads out its wings and gables upon a low hill which is the
first swell of the Harpeth hills, and the rest of the old town stretches
out on the hillside before it down to the valley, in which runs the
Harpeth River, curving around the town and flowing out of the valley to
the Mississippi. Behind the Poplars roll the fields and meadows of the
Home Farm, which has given food and sustenance to the Poplars' brood
since the days of the redskins, when it was cleared by the first Powers
and his servants, with muskets ready to fire into the surrounding
forests. To the left of the Poplars and beyond the chapel lies the
Settlement, in which those lacking in worldly goods have lived for
generations in a kind of semi-poverty, which is about the only poverty
known in the Harpeth Valley. Lately, the Settlement has taken unto
itself a measure of prosperity, because of the great tannery and harness
works in its midst on the banks of the river, which is bringing in gold
from Russia and France. Everybody has made money in the last few years,
and the fashionable wing of Goodloets to the left of the Poplars shows
improvements and restorations that are both costly and sometimes
amazing. However, fortunately the inhabitants of the old village are
conservative, and very little of the delicious moss of tradition has
been scratched off; it has only been clipped into prosperous decorum,
and antiquity still flings its glamour over the town.