Ben Dulany of Shooter's Hill, Said to his wife, "Of course we will Have music, the best that can be found And we, dear wife, will dance one round. Many years have passed since you agreed To slide down from your window and marry with speed, And we'll show our children how to dance After the fashion I learned in France". Mrs. Dulany sighed and said "What could have put this whim in his head". The guests arrived at Shooter's Hill, Names of renown the chambers filled, Masons and Carters, Stevens and Balls, Rosiers and Fendals, Marshalls and Halls, Daingerfields, Herberts, Craiks, Tuckers a few, Platers, Custis, and Randolph and Washingtons, too, Blackburns, Hunters and Forrests and Taylors a lot, Lees, Seldons, Fitzhughs, Wests, Dandridge and Scott, Pope, Ramsey and Graham, French, Lewis and Key, Lloyd, Taylor and Wellford, Ridout, Beverly, Simms, Peters and Lightfoot, Lyles, Murray and Beall, Fauntleroy and Grey and Carroll they tell, Berkley, Fairfax and Bladen, Powell, Chase, Montague, Bassett, Harrison, Tasker, Gant, Stoddert and Chew, Spotswood, Lomax and Taliaferro, Grymes, Rutherford, Snowden, Fontaine and Pendleton, Moncure and Bushrod, But if all were put down, the unlearned might insist, The names had been taken from off the tax list. Ben Dulany of Shooter's Hill, Received them with grace and courtly skill, When all of a sudden he started to dance, And teach them the lessons he learned in France, He drew them up in a regular line And marched them around while he kept time, Shouldered a blunderbuss, stuck on a hat, Called it a helmet, and drilled them in that. Thundered and threatened and ordered them all To know he was giving a marching ball. Round through the parlors, out on the grass Down through the garden and back did they pass, Not for a moment he left them to rest, Forward and backward, and wearied he pressed. Mrs. Dulany appealed to his pride, But unceremonious he thrust her aside. Many the terrors, the words and the fright, But he marched them and marched them till far in the night. Mrs. Dulany again essayed To urge him to cease his desperate raid, Then bending before her his handsome form, He declared no lovelier woman was born Than she, his own, his beautiful wife Then he vowed to love and cherish through life; And to prove to all how he loved her then, He'd embrace her before all those women and men, Which he certainly did, for he clasped her waist, And raising her high, strode off in haste. In vain she screamed, in vain besought, All her entreaties he set at nought, Into the pantry he quickly passed And stuck her up on the vinegar cask Then locking her in, he lovingly said, "Dear wife you are tired, 'tis time for bed".