CHAPTER XLVI.

THE SHIVEREE.

If Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” had not been made wholly in New England, it would not have lacked so many words that do duty as native-born or naturalized citizens in large sections of the United States, and among these words is the one that stands at the head of the present chapter.  I know that some disdainful prig will assure me that it is but a corruption of the French “charivari," and so it is; but then “charivari” is a corruption of the low Latin “charivarium” and that is a corruption of something else, and, indeed, almost every word is a corruption of some other word.  So that there is no good reason why “shiveree,” which lives in entire unconsciousness of its French parentage and its Latin grand-parentage, should not find its place in an “American Dictionary.”

But while I am writing a disquisition on the etymology of the word, the “shiveree” is mustering at Mandluff’s store.  Bill Day has concluded that he is in no immediate danger of perdition, and that a man is a “blamed fool to git skeered about his soul.”  Bob Short is sure the Almighty will not be too hard on a feller, and so thinks he will go on having “a little fun” now and then.  And among the manly recreations which they have proposed to themselves is that of shivereeing “that Dutchman, Gus Wehle.”  It is the solemn opinion of the whole crowd that “no Dutchman hadn’t orter be so lucky as to git sech a beauty of a gal and a hundred acres of bottom lands to boot.”

The members of the party were all disguised, some in one way and some in another, though most of them had their coats inside out.  They thought it necessary to be disguised, “bekase, you know,” as Bill Day expressed it, “ole Grizzly is apt to prosecute ef he gits evidence agin you.”  And many were the conjectures as to whether he would shoot or not.

The instruments provided by this orchestra were as various as their musical tastes.  It is likely that even Mr. Jubilee Gilmore never saw such an outfit.  Bob Short had a dumb-bull, a keg with a strip of raw-hide stretched across one end like a drum-head, while the other remained open.  A waxed cord inserted in the middle of the drum-head, and reaching down through the keg, completed the instrument.  The pulling of the hand over this cord made a hideous bellowing, hence its name.  Bill Day had a gigantic watchman’s rattle, a hickory spring on a cog-wheel.  It is called in the West, a horse-fiddle, because it is so unlike either a horse or a fiddle.  Then there were melodious tin pans and conch-shells and tin horns.  But the most deadly noise was made by Jim West, who had two iron skillet-lids ("leds” he called them) which, when placed face to face, and rubbed, as you have seen children rub tumblers, made a sound discordant and deafening enough to have suggested Milton’s expression about the hinges which “grated harsh thunder.”