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arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the 

 negroes was sincere may be doubted ; but certainly 

 it was the loudest that I ever witnessed : they all 

 talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and, in the 

 violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each 

 other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty 

 voices at once enquired after uncles, and aunts, and 

 grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who 

 had been buried long before I was in existence, and 

 whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by 

 tradition. One woman held up her little naked 

 black child tome, grinning from ear to ear; — "Look, 

 Massa, look here ! him nice lilly neger for Massa ! " 

 Another complained, — " So long since none come 

 see we, Massa ; good Massa, come at last." As for 

 the old people, they were all in one and the same 

 story : now they had lived once to see Massa, they 

 were ready for dying to-morrow, " them no care." 



The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their 

 strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, 

 and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, 

 their heads bound round with different-coloured 

 handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing 

 motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their 

 eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, 

 formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the 

 witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd 

 or more novel than the whole scene ; and yet there 

 was something in it by which I could not help 

 being affected; perhaps it was the consciousness 



