Sam, I found myself somebody; and while looking
about me on the many well-dressed and very good-natured gentlemen who
subsisted on the hope of your generosity, could not avoid the
contemplation of what a glorious world this of ours must be,
possessing as it does so many good hearted souls like yourself, so
rich--but as indifferent to their own best interests. 'You will take
supper, Mr. Smooth?' inquired the man behind the mahogany. Before I
had time to speak, he pulled a bell that jingled like Jehu. And then
there came scampering in a school of negroes, so tidy, trim, and
intelligent. One bowed--another smiled--a third waited with a
salutation my commands. 'Take care of Mister Smooth!' again spoke the
man behind the mahogany, as with an effort to be commanding in accent.
That they might know more emphatically (as Uncle Tom Benton says) that
Mr. Smooth was none of your common citizen, I turned my eyes on the
darkies, and stared at them until they turned pale. Then one possessed
himself of my bundle: moving off with a scientific motion, and a bow
_a la cabinet_, he bid me follow. Obeying his summons, onward we went,
through a long, dark passage, and into a spacious hall up stairs,
where he said they eat their people. No sooner was I bowed to a seat
than a dozen gentlemen darkies set upon me in good earnest; so fast
did they beset me with eatables that I begun to think they had
mistaken me for a thanksgiving turkey about to be fatted for the table
of the secretary of the treasury. The fixins, as Mr. Samuel Slick
would say, made one feel quite at home; not so with the darkies: they
recognizing my home spun, soon became sassy; whereupon I turned round
and set upon _them_ with the broadest grin I could summon. Nor could I
withhold a laugh at seeing them laugh. 'Reckon how mas'r's on big
business to Washington wid Mr. General Pierce,' says one, whose face
was black, and bright, and full of the quizzical; while another, with
a flat crooked nose gave a cunning wink out of his left eye. This
being detected by a superior, in the brisk person of a son of the
Emerald Isle, who stood well six feet in his boots, a 'soucer' with
the broad front of his knuckle bones, between the colored gentleman's
two eyes, was the rejoinder--a most striking remonstrance, that laid
him measuring the floor. Troth! an' it's myself 'd stop yer
botheration. Sure, ye dark spalpeens, is it by the same token ye'd
trate the gintleman? (Here the honest son of s