Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!
“Do not hurry away! Come again and see us. I think the Coopers are all out in Ohio.”
Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!
The cold wind and slight rain seemed refreshing and even welcome, as I went out into the cold air. The captain showed me his stock of fourteen horses and mules, and we interchanged views as to the best method of managing certain maladies in such stock. I had been most kindly entertained; indeed, with the home kindliness which good people in the country show to some hitherto unseen and unknown relative who descends to them from the great world of the city. Not but that my friends did not know cities and men as well as Ulysses, but even Ulysses sometimes
met with a marvel. In after days I became quite familiar with the several families who made the camp, and visited them in sunshine. But they always occur to me in memory as in a deep Rembrandt picture, a wonderful picture, and their voices as in vocal chiaroscuro; singing to the wind without and the rain on the tent,—
Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum!
IV. HOUSE GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA
This chapter was written by my niece through marriage, Miss Elizabeth Robins. It is a part of an article which was published in “The Century,” and it sets forth certain wanderings in seeking old houses in the city of Philadelphia.
All along the lower part of Race Street, saith the lady, are wholesale stores and warehouses of every description. Some carts belonging to one of them had just been unloaded. The stevedores who do this—all negroes—were resting while they waited for the next load. They were great powerful men, selected for their strength, and were of many hues, from café au lait, or coffee much milked, up to the browned or black-scorched berry itself, while the very athletæ were coal-black. They wore blue overalls, and on their heads they had thrown old coffee-bags, which, resting on their foreheads, passed behind their ears and hung loosely down their backs. It was in fact the haik or bag-cloak of the East, and it made a wonderfully effective Arab costume. One of them was half leaning, half sitting, on a pile of bags; his Herculean arms were folded, and he had unconsciously assumed an air of dignity and defiance. He might have passed for an African chief. When we see such men in Egypt or other sunny countries outre mer, we become artistically eloquent; but it rarely occurs
to sketchers and word-painters to do much business in the home-market.