"I entered and took my seat among the audience. No surly pew occupant placed a forbidding hand on the pew door. Seats, hymn-books, crickets, and fans were at my disposal. The hymn was found for me. I found myself (minus 'a voice') joining in the hearty chorus. Who could help it? 'God save the King' and the Marseillaise were tame in comparison. Every body sang. It was infectious. The bent old negress, with her cracked voice, her broad shouldered, muscular son, her sweet-voiced mulatto daughter, and her chubby little grandchild, with swelling chest, to whom Sunday was neither a bugbear nor a bore. And such hearty singing!—sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, but to my ear music, because it was soul, not cold science.
"It was communion-Sabbath, and so I went up to the chancel and knelt side by side with my dusky friends. The clergyman was a white man, and it was millennial to see his loving hand of blessing laid on those dusky brows. This is as it should be, said I—this is worship; and as we retired to make room for other communicants, the clergyman himself stepped forward to assist to the chancel a gray old negress, of fourscore years, whose tottering steps were even then at the grave's brink. I went home happy, for I had not fed on husks.
"Ah! visitors? Then I must run," said Gertrude, springing up at a rap on the door.
"It is Chloe, I fancy," said Rose.
"Well, good-by," said she, stooping to kiss Charley, whom she passed on the threshhold, "I must back to my easel. Ah! it is the locket you want, not me, you rogue," said she to Charley, as she disengaged a chain from her neck, and threw it over the child's, "mercenary, like the rest of your sex."
Chloe marched in with Charley, who, now wide awake, sat perched upon her shoulder, looking as imperial as young Napoleon.
"This yere boy has got to go, missis," said Chloe, still marching round the room, as if treading all objections under foot. "Whar's his frocks and pinafores? My ole missis. Vincent, see him, and take him to ride in her fine carriage, and cry over him, cause she say he so berry like her poor murdered boy."
"De Lor'! missis," exclaimed Chloe, "how white you look! Whar's your salts?"
"Open the window," said Rose, faintly, "the room is too close, Chloe."