ever knew, but he took advantage of
the diversion in his favor to lead Miss Benson off to the ballroom.

IX. OLD SWEET AND WHITE SULFUR

The days went by at the White Sulphur on the wings of incessant gayety.
Literally the nights were filled with music, and the only cares that
infested the day appeared in the anxious faces of the mothers as the
campaign became more intricate and uncertain. King watched this with the
double interest of spectator and player. The artist threw himself into
the melee with abandon, and pacified his conscience by an occasional
letter to Miss Lamont, in which he confessed just as many of his
conquests and defeats as he thought it would be good for her to know.

The colored people, who are a conspicuous part of the establishment,
are a source of never-failing interest and amusement. Every morning the
mammies and nurses with their charges were seated in a long, shining
row on a part of the veranda where there was most passing and repassing,
holding a sort of baby show, the social consequence of each one
depending upon the rank of the family who employed her, and the dress
of the children in her charge. High-toned conversation on these topics
occupied these dignified and faithful mammies, upon whom seemed to rest
to a considerable extent the maintenance of the aristocratic social
traditions. Forbes had heard that while the colored people of the South
had suspended several of the ten commandments, the eighth was especially
regarded as nonapplicable in the present state of society. But he was
compelled to revise this opinion as to the White Sulphur. Nobody ever
locked a door or closed a window. Cottages most remote were left for
hours open and without guard, miscellaneous articles of the toilet were
left about, trunks were not locked, waiters, chambermaids, porters,
washerwomen, were constantly coming and going, having access to the
rooms at all hours, and yet no guest ever lost so much as a hairpin or a
cigar. This fashion of trust and of honesty so impressed the artist that
he said he should make an attempt to have it introduced elsewhere. This
sort of esprit de corps among the colored people was unexpected, and
he wondered if they are not generally misunderstood by writers who
attribute to them qualities of various kinds that they do not possess.
The negro is not witty or consciously humorous, or epigrammatic. The
humor of his actions and sayings lies very much in a certain primitive
simp