The novels Author:Francis Hopkinson Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HI THE OPEN-AIR DRAWING-ROOMS OP KENNEDY SQUARE IF in the long summer days Kennedy Square was haunted by the idle and the weary, in the cool summer nights ... more »its dimly lighted paths were alive with the tread of flying feet, and its shadowy benches gay with the music of laughter and merry greetings. With the going down of the sun, the sidewalks were sprinkled, and the whole street about the Square watered from curb to curb, to cool its sun-baked cobbles. The doors and windows of all the houses were thrown wide to welcome the fresh night air, — laden with the perfume of magnolia, jasmine, and sweet-smelling box. Easy-chairs and cushions were brought out and placed on the clean steps of the porches, and the wide piazzas covered with squares of china- matting, to make ready for the guests of the evening. These guests would begin to gather as soon as the twilight settled, the young girls in theirpretty muslin frocks and ribbons, the young men in white duck suits and straw hats. They thronged the cool, well-swept paths, chattered in bunches under the big trees, or settled like birds on the stone seats and benches. Every few minutes some new group, fresh from their tea-tables, would emerge from one of the houses, poise like a flock of pigeons on the top step, listen to the guiding sound of the distant laughter, and then swoop down in mad frolic, settling in the midst of the main covey, under the big sycamores ; until, roused at the signal of some male bird in a straw hat, or in answer to the call of some bareheaded songstress from across the Square, the whole covey would dash out one of the rickety gates, only to alight again on the stone steps of a neighbor's porch, where their chatter and pipings would last far into the night. It was extraordinary how, from year to year, th...« less