s of
states and cities that would strike the fancy in a business circular.

Late in the evening we were landed in a waiting-room at Pittsburg. I had
now under my charge a young and sprightly Dutch widow with her children;
these I was to watch over providentially for a certain distance farther
on the way; but as I found she was furnished with a basket of eatables,
I left her in the waiting-room to seek a dinner for myself.

I mention this meal, not only because it was the first of which I had
partaken for about thirty hours, but because it was the means of my
first introduction to a coloured gentleman. He did me the honour to wait
upon me after a fashion, while I was eating; and with every word, look,
and gesture marched me farther into the country of surprise. He was
indeed strikingly unlike the negroes of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, or the
Christy Minstrels of my youth. Imagine a gentleman, certainly somewhat
dark, but of a pleasant warm hue, speaking English with a slight and
rather odd foreign accent, every inch a man of the world, and armed with
manners so patronisingly superior that I am at a loss to name their
parallel in England. A butler perhaps rides as high over the unbutlered,
but then he sets you right with a reserve and a sort of sighing patience
which one is often moved to admire. And again, the abstract butler
never stoops to familiarity. But the coloured gentleman will pass you a
wink at a time; he is familiar like an upper-form boy to a fag; he
unbends to you like Prince Hal with Poins and Falstaff. He makes himself
at home and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this waiter behaved himself to
me throughout that supper much as, with us, a young, free, and not very
self-respecting master might behave to a good-looking chambermaid. I had
come prepared to pity the poor negro, to put him at his ease, to prove
in a thousand condescensions that I was no sharer in the prejudice of
race; but I assure you I put my patronage away for another occasion, and
had the grace to be pleased with that result.

Seeing he was a very honest fellow, I consulted him upon a point of
etiquette: if one should offer to tip the American waiter? Certainly
not, he told me. Never. It would not do. They considered themselves too
highly to accept. They would even resent the offer. As for him and me,
we had enjoyed a very pleasant conversation; he, in particular, had
found much pleasure in my society; I was a stranger; this was exactly
one of those ra