However, it is not to be assumed that their lives were devoid of pleasure. The hardships of the frontier, like the sternness of their religion, was accepted as a way of life. There were not always Indians to fight or hunger to be faced or toil to be done, and not every day was the sabbath to be reverently observed. There were family evenings around the fireplace and Saturday nights of merrymaking. One ancestor writes:

"Their principal amusements were the frolic or dance. Waltzes and cotillions were considered flagrant breaches of the Seventh Commandment, but as Burns has it:

At neighborhood frolics, there were lively games for the unmarried young as well as pranks, practical jokes, courting and flirtation. Such parties endured in rural America up to recent generations. The Scots, ever superior whiskey-makers, carried with them their skill and small stills to Ulster and on to Amercia, where distilling provided a means of turning their grain into cash. However, there was likely a jug held back from the market for Saturday nights, adding zest to the parties.

1 Unpublished papers of Thomas Archibald Huston of Shelby County, Alabama.
2 Ibid.