Atlantic Coast (U.S.) -- Description and travel -- Fiction
The colored people, who are a conspicuous part of the establishment,
are a source of never-failing interest and amusement. Every morning the
mammies and nurses with their charges were seated in a long, shining
row on a part of the veranda where there was most passing and repassing,
holding a sort of baby show, the social consequence of each one
depending upon the rank of the family who employed her, and the dress
of the children in her charge. High-toned conversation on these topics
occupied these dignified and faithful mammies, upon whom seemed to rest
to a considerable extent the maintenance of the aristocratic social
traditions. Forbes had heard that while the colored people of the South
had suspended several of the ten commandments, the eighth was especially
regarded as nonapplicable in the present state of society. But he was
compelled to revise this opinion as to the White Sulphur. Nobody ever
locked a door or closed a window. Cottages most remote were left for
hours open and without guard, miscellaneous articles of the toilet were
left about, trunks were not locked, waiters, chambermaids, porters,
washerwomen, were constantly coming and going, having access to the
rooms at all hours, and yet no guest ever lost so much as a hairpin or a
cigar. This fashion of trust and of honesty so impressed the artist that
he said he should make an attempt to have it introduced elsewhere. This
sort of esprit de corps among the colored people was unexpected, and
he wondered if they are not generally misunderstood by writers who
attribute to them qualities of various kinds that they do not possess.
The negro is not witty or consciously humorous, or epigrammatic. The
humor of his actions and sayings lies very much in a certain primitive
simplicity. Forbes couldn't tell, for instance, why he was amused at a
remark he heard one morning in the store. A colored girl sauntered in,
looking about vacantly. “You ain't got no cotton, is you?” “Why, of
course we have cotton.” “Well” (the girl only wanted an excuse to say
something), “I only ast, is you?”
Sports of a colonial and old English flavor that have fallen into disuse
elsewhere varied the life at the White. One day the gentlemen rode in
a mule-race, the slowest mule to win, and this feat was followed by an
exhibition of negro agility in climbing the greased pole and catching
the greased pig; another day the cavaliers contended on the green field
surrounded by a brilliant array of beauty and costume, as two Amazon
baseball nines, the one nine arrayed in yellow cambric frocks and
sun-bonnets, and the other in bright red gowns--the whiskers and big
boots and trousers adding nothing whatever to the illusion of the female
battle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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