The driver was offered a drink.

“Nope,” he shook his head, grinning wisely, “I’m a teetotaler.”

“Be back for us at dark,” we shouted, as he jee-d about, heading toward town again.

“Here’s to old Gregory and his first drunk!”

Tin cups had been produced, and the bung of one of the barrels started ... the boys lifted their full, foaming cups in unison.

“Bottoms up!”

I joined in the drinking, despite my previous protestation that I would not....

“Where’s the old boy that runs this farm?”

“All the family’s probably in town, this being Saturday afternoon.”

“Let’s whoop ’er up, then!”

We sang and shouted at the top of our voices.

The cups had been four times filled.

Though I had poured half of mine on the ground, I already felt dizzy.  But also a pleasant tingling, a warmth, was slowly increasing in my nerves and veins and body ... an increased sense of well-being permeated me.  I stopped spilling my beer on the ground and drank it eagerly.

Someone proposed races up and down the cornfield.  We rolled up our trousers, to make it more hilarious, and ran, smashing through the tender spring growth ... yelling and shouting....

Then the game unaccountably shifted into seeing who could pull up the most corn stalks, beginning at an equal marked-off space out in each row and rushing back with torn-up handfuls....

The afternoon dropped toward twilight and everybody was as mellow as the departing day—­which went down in a riot of gold....

A great area of the field looked as if it had fallen in the track of a victorious army, or had been fallen upon by a cloud of locusts.

A chill came in with twilight, and we built a fire, and danced about it.

I danced and danced ... we all danced and howled in Indian disharmony ... wailing ... screeching ... falling ... getting up again ... when I danced and leaped the world resumed its order ... when I stood still or sat down plump, the trees took up the gyrations where I had left off, and went about in solemn, ringing circles ... green and graceful minuets of nature....

“Here’s to good old Gregory, drink ’er down, drink ’er down!” I heard the boys, led by Jack Travers, bray discordantly.

“Want ’a hear some songs?” I quavered, interrogating.

“What kind o’ songs?” asked a big, hulking boy that we called ’Black Jim,’ because of his dark complexion.

“Real songs,” I replied, “jail songs, tramp songs, coacaine songs!”

All those Rabelaisan folk-things I had lost while hopping the freight, came surging back, each not in fragments, but entire.  Drunk, I did then what my brain since, intoxicated or sober, cannot do ...  I rendered them all, one after the other, just as I had copied them down....

* * * * *

“And more!  Gregory, more!” the boys kept shouting.