Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benet

The dance is at the Piper's this time -- the last Piper dance of the / Southampton season and the biggest -- other people may give dances / after it but everybody who knows will only think of them as relatively / pleasant or useless addenda. The last Piper Dance has been the official / period to the Southampton summer ever since Elinor's _debut_ -- and this / time the period is sure to be bigger and rounder than ever since it / closes the most successful season Southampton has ever had.

Nothing very original about its being a masquerade, from Mr. Piper / a courteously grey-haired mandarin in jade-green robes beside Mrs. / Piper -- lovely Mary Embree that was -- in the silks of a Chinese empress, / heavy and shining and crusted as the wings of a jeweler's butterfly, / her reticent eyes watching the bright broken patterns of the dancing as / impassively as if she were viewing men being tortured or invested with / honor from the Dragon Throne, to Oliver, a diffident Pierrot who has / discovered no even bearably comfortable way of combining spectacles and / a mask, and Peter who [Illustration: THE LAST PIPER DANCE HAS BEEN THE / OFFICIAL PERIOD TO THE SOUTHAMPTON SUMMER] is gradually turning purple / under the furs of a dancing bear. Nothing much out of the ordinary in / the tunes and the three orchestras and the fact that a dozen gentlemen / dressed as the Devil are finding their tails very inconvenient as / regards the shimmy and a dozen Joans of Arc are eying each other with / looks of dumb hatred whenever they pass. Nothing singular about the / light-heart throb of the music, the smell of powder and scent and heat / and flowers, the whole loose drifting garland of the dancers, blowing / over and around the floor in the idle designs of sand, floating like / scraps of colored paper through a smooth wind heavy with music as the / hours run away like light water through the fingers. But outside the / house the Italian gardens are open, little lanterns spot them like / elf-lights, shining on hedge-green, pale marble; the night is pallid / with near and crowded stars, the air warm as Summer water, sweet as dear / youth.