FEBRUARY 23.
This morning my picture was drawn by a self-taught genius, a negro Apelles, belonging to Dr. Pope, the minister; and the picture was exactly such as a self-taught genius might be expected to produce. It was a straight hard outline, without shade or perspective; the hair was a large black patch, and the face covered with an uniform layer of flesh-colour, with a red spot in the centre of each cheek. As to likeness, there was not even an attempt to take any. But still, such as they were, there were eyes, nose, and mouth, to be sure. A long red nose supplied the place of my own snub; an enormous pair of whiskers stretched themselves to the very corner of my mouth; and in place of three hairs and a half, the painter, in the superabundance of his generosity, bestowed upon me a pair of eye-brows more bushy than Dr. Johnson’s, and which, being formed in an exact semicircle, made the eyes beneath them stare with an expression of the utmost astonishment. The negroes, however, are in the highest admiration of the painter’s skill, and consider the portrait as a striking resemblance; for there is a very blue coat with very yellow buttons, and white gaiters and trow-sers, and an eye-glass so big and so blue, that it looks as if I had hung a pewter plate about my neck; and a bunch of watch-seals larger than those with which Pope has decorated Belinda’s great great grandsire. John Fuller (to whom, jointly with Nicholas, the charge of this inestimable treasure is to be entrusted) could not find words to express his satisfaction at the performance. “Dere massa coat! and dere him chair him sit in! and dere massa seals, all just de very same ting! just all as one! And oh! ki! dere massa pye-glass!” In the midst of his raptures he dropped the picture, and fractured the frame-glass. His despair now equalled his former joy;—“Oh, now what for him do? Such a pity! Just to break it after it was all done so well! All so pretty!” However, we stuck the broken glass together with wafers, and he carried it off, assuring me, “that when massa gone, he should talk to it every morning, all one as if massa still here.” Indeed, this “talking to massa” is a favourite amusement among the negroes, and extremely inconvenient: they come to me perpetually with complaints so frivolous, and requests so unreasonable, that I am persuaded they invent them only to have an excuse for “talk to massa;” and when I have given them a plump refusal, they go away perfectly satisfied, and “tank massa for dis here great indulgence of talk.”
There is an Eboe carpenter named Strap, who was lately sick and in great danger, and whom I nursed with particular care. The poor fellow thinks that he never can express his gratitude sufficiently; and whenever he meets me in the public road, or in the streets of Savannah la Mar, he rushes towards the carriage, roars out to the postilion to stop, and if the boy does not obey instantly, he abuses him with all his power; “for why him no stop when him want talk to massa?”—“But look, Strap, your beast is getting away!”—“Oh! damn beast, massa.”—“But you should go to your mountain, or you will get no vittle.”—“Oh, damn vittle, and damn mountain! me no want vittle, me want talk wid massa;” and then, all that he has got to say is, “Oh massa, massa! God bless you, massa! me quite, quite glad to see you come back, my own massa!” And then he bursts into a roar of laughter so wild and so loud, that the passers-by cannot help stopping to stare and laugh too.