To assemble our costumes was simplicity itself. My own outfit was readily concocted from a few ordinary and easily obtainable household objects—viz. a bedsheet, a hammer, and a chisel (the last two articles being loaned to me for the occasion by a neighbor, Mr. Reuben Bourne, who earned his living as a mason). Another bedsheet—artfully stitched together by Muddy in the form of a surpassingly elegant gown of antique Grecian cut—likewise constituted Sissy’s principal garb. Her masquerade was completed with the aid of a thick white paste compounded of flour and water and skillfully applied to her face, thus creating the altogether convincing illusion that her lovely visage was composed of hewn, statuary marble.

By such simple, yet ingenious, means my conception was triumphantly realized; so that—when the eve of the gala finally arrived—Sissy and I stood forth as the living incarnations of that fabled antique couple, the sculptor Pygmalion and his exquisite statue, Galatea, whose beauty was such that—overwhelmed with desire for his own creation—the artist offered fervent supplications to the goddess Aphrodite, who answered his prayers by transforming the lovely marble figure into a being of flesh and blood.

At precisely six o’clock on Saturday evening, while Sissy and I stood in the parlor, effecting some final adjustments to our costumes, there came a resounding knock upon the front door of our dwelling: Colonel Crockett had arrived to convey us to the party. This summons was answered by Muddy, who—upon opening the door—gasped so loudly in wonderment that the noise carried clearly from the front hallway to the parlor. Her amazed ejaculation was immediately followed by the tramp of approaching footsteps. Seconds later, the frontiersman loomed before us. Framed in the doorway—with his feet spread wide, his chest thrust forward, and a proud, military elevation of his head—he stood as though posing for our inspection and admiration. And in truth, he cut a striking figure.

In dramatic contrast to his customary attire, he was garbed in a hunting shirt of dressed deerskin, fringed with beads of variegated colors and belted dose to his muscular body with a girdle of wampum, through which a gleaming hunting knife had been thrust. Resting upon his head was a raccoon-skin cap, the shaggy tail of which hung suspended from the side and lay draped across the collar of his shirt. His legs were encased in buckskin trousers, gartered to the knees with the sinews of deer; and upon his feet were moccasins fashioned out of scraps of buffalo hide and ornamented, in the Indian style, with porcupine quills. Cradled in one arm was a magnificent Kentucky rifle, its gleaming stock adorned with silver filigree. A pouch and horn, slung crossways over his brawny chest, completed the picturesque costume.