d we
seek out the dusky beauties of the town in their own quarters, and shake
a leg at their Dignity Routs, Blackamoor Drums, and Pumpkin-Faced
Assemblies, or by what other name the poor Black wretches might choose
to call their uproarious merrymakings. There, in some shed, all hustled
together as a Moorfields Sweetener does luck in a bag, would be a mob of
men and women Negroes, all dressed in their bravest finery, although
little of it was to be seen either on their Backs or their Feet; the
Head being the part of their Bodies which they chiefly delight to
ornament. Such ribbons and owches, such gay-coloured rags and blazing
tatters, would they assume, and to the Trips and Rounds played to them
by some Varlet of a black fiddler, with his hat at a prodigious cock,
and mounted on a Tub, like unto the sign of the Indian Bacchus at the
Tobacconist's, would they dance and stamp and foot it merrily--with
plenty of fruit, salt fish, pork, roasted plantain, and so forth, to
regale themselves withal, not forgetting punch and sangaree--quite
forgetful, poor mercurial wretches, for the time being of Fetters and
the Scourge and the Driver that would hurry them to their dire labour
the morrow morn. Surely there never did exist so volatile,
light-spirited, feather-brained a race as these same Negro Blacks. They
will whistle and crack nuts, ay and dance and sing to the music of the
Fiddle or the Banjar an hour after the skin has been half flayed off
their backs. They seem to bear no particular Malice to their Tormentors,
so long as their weekly rations of plantain, yam, or salt fish, be not
denied them, and that they have Osnaburgs enow to make them shirts and
petticoats to cover themselves. Give them but these, and their dance at
Christmas time, with a kind word thrown to them now and again, just as
you would fling a marrow-bone to a dog, and they will get along well
enough in slavery, almost grinning at its Horrors and making light of
its unutterable Woes. I never saw so droll a people in my life. Nor is
it the less astonishing thing about them that, beneath all this seeming
lightheartedness and jollity, there often lies smouldering a Fire of the
Fiercest passion and blackest revenge. The dark-skinned fellow who may
be flapping the flies away from you in the morning, and bearing your
kicks and cuffs as though they were so many cates and caresses, may, in
the evening, make one in a circle of Heathen monsters joined together to
listen