When our upper chamber was matted, and furnished with white curtains and shades, and bed, chairs, and dressing-glass, Minnah came in to look; and her delight was boundless.
"Dear me! O Lord, O Lord!" she exclaimed, turning round and round. "Dese yer Northern ladies—they hes every thing, and they does every thing!"
More especially was she taken with the pictures we hung on the walls. Before one of these (Raphael's Madonna of the Veil) Minnah knelt down in a kind of ecstatic trance, and thus delivered herself:—
"O good Lord! if there ain't de Good Man when he was a baby! How harmless he lies there! so innocent! And here we be, we wicked sinners, turning our backs on him, and going to the Old Boy. O Lord, O Lord! we ought to be better than we be: we sartin ought."
This invocation came forth with streaming tears in the most natural way in the world; and Minnah seemed, for the time being, perfectly subdued. It is only one of many instances we have seen of the overpowering influence of works of art on the impressible nervous system of the negro.
But it is one thing to have an amusing and picturesque specimen of a human being, as Minnah certainly was, and another to make one useful in the traces of domestic life.
As the first white ladies upon the ground, Mrs. F—— and myself had the task of organizing this barbaric household, and of bringing it into the forms of civilized life. We commenced with the washing.
Before the time of our coming, it had been customary for the gentlemen to give their washing into the hands of Minnah or Judy, to be done at such times and in such form and manner as best suited them.
The manner which did suit them best was to put all the articles to soak indefinitely, in soapsuds, till such time as to them seemed good. On being pressed for some particular article, and roundly scolded by any of the proprietors, they would get up a shirt, a pair of drawers, a collar or two, with abundant promises for the rest when they had time.
The helpless male individuals of the establishments had no refuge from the feminine ruses and expedients, and the fifty incontrovertible reasons which were always on hand to prove to them that things could be done no other way than just as they were done; and, in fact, found it easier to get their washing back again by blandishments than by bullying.