The niggers were something for Bruce to look at, think about. So many black men slowly growing brown. Then would come the light brown, the velvet-browns, Caucasian features. The brown women tending up to the job--getting the race lighter and lighter. Soft Southern nights, warm dusky nights. Shadows flitting at the edge of cotton fields, in dusky roads by saw-mill towns. Soft voices laughing, laughing. Oh, ma banjo dog, Oh, ho, ma banjo dog. An’ I ain’t go’na give you None of ma jelly roll. Niggers on the docks, niggers in the city streets, niggers laughing. A slow dance always going on.... Clean ships, dirty tramp ships, half-naked niggers--a shadow dance.... They dance south--out of doors--white in a pavilion in one field, blacks, browns, high browns, velvet-browns in a pavilion in the next field--but one ... Oh, ma banjo dog! ... Give us a song, Jack--a dance--the gumbo drift. Come, the night is hot.... Nigger girls in the streets, nigger women, nigger men. There is a brown cat lurking in the shadow of a building. “Come, brown puss--come and get your cream.” The men who work on the docks in New Orleans have slender flanks like running horses, broad shoulders, loose, heavy lips hanging down--faces like old monkeys sometimes--bodies like young gods--sometimes. On Sundays--when they go to church, or to a bayou baptizing, the brown girls do sure cut loose with the colors--gaudy nigger colors on nigger women making the streets flame--deep purples, reds, yellows, green like young corn-shoots coming up. They sweat. The skin colors brown, golden yellow, reddish brown, purple brown. When the sweat runs down high brown backs the colors come out and dance before the eyes. Flash that up, you silly painters, catch it dancing. Song-tones in words, music in words--in colors, too. Silly American painters! They chase a Gauguin shadow to the South Seas.