enriched, his pages sing spontaneously, with the names 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

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