I have not been able to divine entirely why Mr. Gitney called for a pox party when he did. Certainly, the first and clearest motivation was that most obvious to view: that the smallpox circulated throughout the north shore at that time, and, in anticipation of its spread throughout the countryside — which, in a time of tumult, would be rapid and rapacious — he proposed that all who had not previously suffered from the disease should be exposed to it through a prescribed process which rendered it, in most cases, inoffensive. By submitting guests to a mild form of the distemper, which should last for some few weeks, he might greatly curtail the mortality of his acquaintance and their households.

And yet — at the time he announced the party, Boston was hearing only its first rumors of plague in the countryside. There was, as yet, no cause for alarm.

Mr. Gitney had other reasons for announcing this convocation; these darker purposes, I only happened upon as the party progressed. Suffice to say, it was not medical foresight which prompted him to arrange this gruesome fête.

Not foresight indeed — nor prognostication — for not except in nightmare could he have predicted what destruction this gathering would occasion; that even as my mother and I copied out the invitations at his command, the fates had bent their heads above our household, muttering, and were about to blast his College of Lucidity forever.

My mother and I, as I have said, wrote the invitations; and runners were hired to take them throughout the city and the countryside. It was not far advanced into the spring, and the narrow streets were thick with mud, puddles bright in ruts near heaves. Men on errands had to step dainty to avoid being spattered.

The guests, primarily, were the extended relations of Mr. Gitney, that sizeable clan of merchants known only as the Young Men, cheerful in demeanor, indeterminate in number. Some had fled the city; others, remaining, were sunk in an uncharacteristic despair, their trade irreparably harmed first by their investment in interdicted Indian lands, second by their participation in non-importation agreements, and thirdly, by the punitive closing of the Harbor by Parliamentary decree.

Warships drifted there now; none could slip past.

Taking good advantage of the bounty sent to the city’s relief, Mr. Gitney and Mr. Sharpe ordered wines and spirits, fruits procured by special appointment, beeves and hams, flour and honey, game-birds and squash, and, from a pest-house in Salem, a glass jar full of contaminate matter from the pox-sores of the dead.

A harpsichord was rented for the festivities. We placed it in one of the experimental chambers and hauled the philosophic machines against the wall so there should be space for dancing. The day before the party, one of the grooms was employed to wax the floor.

He wore a slipper on one foot and a brush on the other. They required him to dance there alone for three hours.

I passed and watched.

In the silence, he skated.

The afternoon sun was cast across the floor. Where the bowing and leaping should soon commence, there the old man slid and spun by himself, his arms fluttering, making pretty courtesies to chairs; pausing for a pas de Basque; his heels thumping; executing secret glissades in beeswax.

Silence and sunlight were his partners.