"A gunner may wear a jacket, Swinburne, if he likes; when you go on shore you may bend the swallow-tail, if you please."
"Well, sir, then if that's the case, I'll take the warrant, because I know it will please the old woman."
So saying, Swinburne hitched up his trousers, and went down below. I may here observe that Swinburne kept his round jacket until our arrival in England, when the "old woman," his wife, who thought her dignity at stake, soon made him ship the swallow-tail; and, after it was once on, Swinburne took a fancy to it, and always wore it, except when he was at sea.
The same evening, as I was coming with O'Brien from the governor's house, where I had dined, we passed a building, lighted up. "What can that be?" observed O'Brien; "not a dignity ball—there is no music." Our curiosity induced us to enter, and we found it to be fitted up as a temporary chapel, filled with black and coloured people, who were ranged on the forms, and waiting for the preacher.
"It is a Methodist meeting," said I to O'Brien.
"Never mind," said he, "let us hear what is going on."
In a moment afterwards the pulpit was filled, not by a white man, as we had anticipated, but by a tall negro. He was dressed in black, and his hair, which it was impossible to comb down straight, was plaited into fifty little tails, well tied at the end of them, like you sometimes see the mane of a horse; this produced a somewhat more clerical appearance. His throat was open and collar laid back; the wristbands of his shirt very large and white, and he flourished a white cambric handkerchief.
"What a dandy he is!" whispered O'Brien.
I thought it almost too absurd when he said he would take the liberty to praise God in the 17th hymn, and beg all the company to join chorus. He then gave out the stanzas in the most strange pronunciation.
"Gentle Jesus, God um lub," &c.