context of the above citation-even in the fiction the author wishes to convey the early origins of the ballad.....so at least he is consistant with himself....

Would be good to find another instance of the ballad

" Mrs. Frechette will favor us with a ballad."

The little woman did not flinch an instant.

" The committee had no right to ask me for an original ballad," said she. " I never write ballads, and Tom does not. But I will sing an old Yankee ballad, which I learned on Thanksgiving day from a real Mayflower girl. She says the people in Plymouth County—I think that is the place—knew what the time was some two hundred years ago or less. You must all join in the chorus."

And with great spirit she sang :

" 'Twas up to Uncle Tracy's,

The fifth of November,
Last Thanksgiving night.

As I very well remember :
And there we had a frolic,

A frolic, indeed,
And drank several glasses

Of good anise-seed.

" And there was Parson Holmes,

And there was Perez Drew,
And there was Seth Gilbert,

And Seth Thomas, too ;
And there were too many,

Too many for to name,
And by and by I'll tell you how

We carried on the game.

' We carried on the game

Till 'twas late in the night—

There was one pretty girl
And she lost her eye-sight.

No wonder—no wonder-
No wonder, indeed,

For she drank three full glasses
Of good anise-seed."

She sang the quaint old air so merrily and she commanded the rest so instinctively that they caught it quickly, and sang the last half of each verse with her.

Amid general laughing she turned to Mr. Decker, and said :

'' That is the way your Yankee ancestors kept Thanksgiving, Mr. Decker, before Nahum Barrow's