10

9.

the same time. Once a man that was drinking fell from the rear
end of that second floor dance place and plunged the thirty feet
to the water that was about ten deet deep there when the mill was
not running. The boys jumped in and saved him. I left Mr. Solomon
the first of December 1904. 'I'll give you 12.50 a month, Frank,
if you'll stay on and oversee my business,' he offered, but I would
not be persuaded to abandon my plans to go west again.

"My first cousin, Matthew Hamilton, had come from Marfa, Texas,
to visit us, after I had decided to go, and I stayed on awhile to
show him around and enjoy our local parties and dances with him. Old
Blue Jay, Chase the Squirrel, Hands Around, and the Irish Trot were
some of those old dances. Don't those names sound funny now? But we
would have laughed if anyone had told us that we would live to
see folks dancing the Bunny Hug or the Big Apple.

"One night we were coming home a short route that led through
a graveyard. it was dark. We couldn't see or hear a thing. All of
a sudden our horses stopped and seemed very much frightened. They
would not go another step. I got out of the buggy and tried to lead
them; still they would not go. We had to turn around and go back
another way. We stabled out horses and decided to go back and find
the ghost. We took a lantern and returned to the graveyard, and found
a very drunk man lying on a slab over a grave.

"Not long after that I thought I'd have some fun with Matthew,
so decided to scare him one night when I knew he'd be coming alone
through the graveyard. I put on one of mother's long white chemises,

1695