220 A CRUSADE .IN THE EAST. 
success of my experiment, but rather inspired by the music I 
was making, which I assure you was not bad. The familiar 
airs of home made me sentimental, and I merged into the 
doleful air of “ Give me back my heart again; oh ! give it 
back again!” which was a miserable failure ; not a damsel 
seemed disposed to listen to it. They commenced, in the very 
middle of the most pathetic strain, to call for the first tune; 
so I had to return to “ Old Zip Coon.” When I had con¬ 
cluded, there was no end to the tahihs: Mr. Coon was a de¬ 
cided hit. In order to vary the entertainment, silence was 
commanded again, and Yusef was desired to explain that there 
would be a song; that it was a song of an old black gentle¬ 
man who lived in America, who was a Pasha among the 
blacks ; that he was called Uncle Ned because he was so 
venerable, and, being very old, the hair all fell out of his 
head, and there was no hair at all in the place where the 
hair ought to grow ; that he hadn’t any eyes to see with, and, 
consequently, was as blind as a post, or a stone wall, or any 
thing else that is supposed to be deficient in eyes; that 
neither had he teeth to eat bread with, and he had to let the 
bread alone and eat something else; that his fingers were as 
long as canes in the brake, which was about an average of 
sixteen feet; and, eventually, that one day when he was out 
in the field, a horrible monster called Grim Death came along 
and caught him by the heel and carried him away, and he 
was never heard of any more except in this song, which was 
written in commemoration of all these facts. Thereupon, 
having excited the most profound interest in the history of 
Uncle Ned, I launched forth into the song, keeping as near 
the tune as possible, and going through all the motions de¬ 
scriptive of the baldness of his head, the absence of his teeth 
and the length of his fingers. At length, when I arrived at 
the final catastrophe, where Grim Death seizes the old gentle¬ 
man by the heel, I made a sudden motion at the heel of our 
worthy host, who was sitting near by, completely upsetting 
him with fright, and causing a laugh from the audience that 
seemed as if it would never come to an end. It was the best 
hit of the evening, and completely removed all constraint. 
