By their devotion to principle, by the firmness of their commander, they had given the cause of Freedom a mighty uplift in the old State of Kentucky.
I recall an evening in the Louisville Hotel. Officers of the army,—majors, captains, lieutenants,—were there from camp, chatting with the ladies. It was a pleasant company,—an hour of comfort and pleasure. The evening was chilly, and a coal-fire in the grate sent out its genial warmth. The cut glass of the chandeliers sparkled with ruby, purple, and amethyst in the changing light. In the anterooms there were chess-players absorbed in the intellectual game, with a knot of silent spectators.
At the dinner-table Mr. Brown was my servant. His complexion was a shade darker than mine. He served me faithfully, wearing a white cotton jacket and apron. He entered the parlor in the evening, not wearing his hotel uniform, but faultlessly dressed as a gentleman. He brought not a lady, but a double-bass viol. He was followed by two fellow-servants, one with a violin, the other with a banjo. The one with the violin was a short, thick-set, curly-headed African,—black as the King of Dahomey. The other was whiter than most of the officers in the room.
They were the hotel table-waiters and also a quadrille band. The violinist did not know B flat from F sharp. Musical notation was Greek to him; but he had rhythm, a quick, tuneful ear, and an appreciation of the beautiful in music rarely found among the many thousands who take lessons by the quarter. He did not give us Old Tar River, Uncle Ned, and O Susannah, but themes from Labitsky and Donizetti,—melodies which once heard are long remembered. His two comrades accompanied him in time and tune. For the young ladies and officers it was a delightful hour. Mr. Brown was the factotum, calling the changes with as much steadiness and precision, while handling the double-bass, as Hall or Dodworth at the grand ball to the Prince of Wales. So we were served by four thousand dollars' worth of body and soul!
The doorway leading into the hall was a portrait-gallery of dusky faces,—Dinah, Julia, Sam, and James; old aunt Rebecca, with a yellow turban on her head; young Sarah, three feet high, bare-legged, bare-armed, in a torn, greasy calico dress,—her only garment; young Toney, who had so much India-rubber in his heels that he capered irrepressibly through the hall and executed a double-shuffle. While the grand stairway, leading to the halls above was piled with dark, eager faces, reminding one of the crowded auditory looking upon Belshazzar's feast in the great picture of Allston,—fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand dollars' worth of bones, blood, and brains!
The violinist was in trouble. The screws would not stick, and in spite of his spitting in the holes, his twisting and turning, he was obliged to stop in the middle of the dance. He made strenuous efforts to keep his instrument in tune. A man in shoulder-straps, leading a fair-haired, graceful maiden, his partner in the dance, with a clenched fist and an oath informed the musician that if he didn't fix that quick he would knock his head off! It was a little glimpse of the divine, beneficent missionary institution ordained of God for the elevation of the sons of Ham!
It was not difficult to make a transition in thought to a South Carolina rice-swamp or Louisiana sugar-plantation or Arkansas cotton-field, where a master's passion was law, and where knocking off men's heads was not so rare a performance.
Among the dusky crowd gazing in upon the waltzers was a girl, sixteen or seventeen years old,—a brunette, with cherry lips, sparkling black eyes, and cheeks as fresh and fair as apricots. She was a picture of health. She gazed with evident delight, and yet there was always upon her countenance a shade of sadness. In form and feature she was almost wholly Anglo-Saxon, and more than Anglo-Saxon in beauty.
I met her in the hall during the day having charge of a young child, and had marked her beauty, ease, grace, and intelligence, and supposed that she was a boarder at the hotel,—the daughter or young wife of some officer, till seeing her the central figure of the dusky group. Then the thought came flashing, "She is a slave!"
She could have joined in the cotillon with as much grace as any of the fair dancers.