e. This dreadful misfortune almost unmanned me, and curtailed
both my pride and pleasure for the night. I cried until I could cry no
more. However, I was determined I would not be done out of my sport after
being at the expense of coming, so I went round and borrowed some pins,
and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the
dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the
fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud
cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and
round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle,
jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great
satisfaction every eye seemed to be upon me, and I could not help thinking
about what an impression I should leave behind upon those pretty yellow
and Sambo gals, who were gazing at me, thinking I was the richest and
handsomest nigger they had ever seen: but unfortunately the pins in my
breeches gave way, and to my great confusion my shirt tail fell out; and
what made my situation still more disgraceful was the mischievous conduct
of my partner, the gal that I was dancing with, who instead of trying to
conceal my shame caught my shirt tail behind and held it up. The roar of
laughter that came from both men and gals almost deafened me, and I would
at this moment have sunk through the floor, so I endeavoured to creep out
as slily as I could; but even this I was not permitted to do until I had
undergone a hauling around the room by my unfortunate shirt tail: and this
part of the programme was performed by the gals, set on by the boys--every
nigger who could not stand up and laugh, because laughing made them weak,
fell down on the floor and rolled round and round. When the gals saw their
own turn they let me go and I hurried outside and stood behind the house,
beneath a beautiful bright moon, which saw me that night the most wretched
of all negroes in the land of Dixie; and what made me feel, in my own
opinion, that my humiliation was just as complete as the triumph of the
negroes inside was glorious, was that the gals had turned my pockets out,
and found that the hundreds of dollars they had thought my pockets
contained, consisted of 24 cents or pennies, and 50 brass buttons.
Everything was alive and happy inside the room, but no one knew or cared
how miserable I was--the joy and life of the dance that night seemed
entirely at my expen