We returned, and now before the inn, on the green plat
around the Maypole, the villagers were celebrating Whit-Tuesday. This
Maypole is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these
garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high
smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to
the top may have what he can get,--a very laughable scene as you may
suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of
success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general,
I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ranks
degenerate far less from the ideal of a woman, than the men from that of
man. The dances were reels and waltzes; but chiefly the latter. This
dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but here the
emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the passion,
which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever after the
giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the woman laying
her arm, with confident affection, on the man's shoulders, or around his
neck. The first couple at the waltzing was a very fine tall girl, of two
or three and twenty, in the full bloom and growth of limb and feature,
and a fellow with huge whiskers, a long tail, and woollen night-cap; he
was a soldier, and from the more than usual glances of the girl, I
presumed was her lover.
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