So it happened that Jeff was often at
the more pretending residences of the neighborhood, sometimes
fiddling in the detached kitchen of a Southern mansion to the
shuffle of heavy feet, again in the lighted parlor, especially
when Confederate troops were quartered near. It was then that his
strains took on their most inspiring and elevated character. He
gave wings to the dark-eyed Southern girls; their feet scarcely
touched the floor as they whirled with their cavaliers in gray, or
threaded the mazes of the cotillon then and there in vogue.
Nor did he disdain an invitation to a crossroads tavern,
frequented by poor whites and enlisted men, or when the nights
were warm, to a moonlit sward, on which he would invite his
audience to a reel which left all breathless. While there was a
rollicking element in the strains of his fiddle which a deacon
could not resist, he, with the intuition of genius, adapted
himself to the class before him. In the parlor, he called off the
figures of a quadrille with a "by-yer-leave-sah" air, selecting,
as a rule, the highest class of music that had blessed his ears,
for he was ear-taught only.
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