countenance, which is at once vacuous and singularly plain, disagrees
with me thoroughly. Go! or I shall

BE SICK!"

So saying the great actress gave me a

VIGOROUS KICK

which landed me outside her room, considerably shaken, and entirely
under the spell of her matchless charm.

* * * * *

For "quite a while" during the first tour I stayed in Washington with
my friend Miss Olive Seward, and all the servants of that delightful
household were colored. This was my first introduction to the negroes,
whose presence more than anything else in the country, makes America
seem foreign to European eyes. They are more sharply divided into high
and low types than white people, and are not in the least alike in their
types. It is safe to call any colored man "George." They all love it,
perhaps because of George Washington, and most of them are really named
George. I never met such perfect service as they can give. _Some_ of
them are delightful. The beautiful, full voice of the "darkey" is so
attractive, so soothing, and they are so deft and gentle. Some of the
women are beautiful, and all the young appeared to me to be well-formed.
As for the babies! I washed two or three little piccaninnies when I was
in the South, and the way they rolled their gorgeous eyes at me was "too
cute," which means in British-English "fascinating."

At the Washington house, the servants danced a cake-walk for me--the
colored cook, a magnificent type, who "took the cake," saying, "that was
because I chose a good handsome boy to dance with, Missie."

They sang too. Their voices were beautiful--with such illimitable power,
yet as sweet as treacle.

The little page-boy had a pet of a wooly head. Henry once gave him a
tip--"fee," as they call it in America--and said: "There, that's for a
new wig when this one is worn out," gently pulling the astrakhan-like
hair. The tip would have bought him many wigs, I think!

"Why, Uncle Tom, how your face shines to-night!" said my hostess to one
of the very old servants.

"Yes, Missie, glycerine and rose-water, Missie!"

He had taken some from her dressing-table to shine up his face in honor
of me! A shiny complexion is considered to be a great beauty among the
negroes! The dear old man! He was very bent and very old; and looked
like one of the logs that he used to bring in for the fire--a log from
some hoary, lichened tree whose life was long since past. He would
produce a p