Almost every house, big or little, boasts a southern gallery or porch. The houses are built right on the street, but the large door opens from the street to the porch and not to the house. The gardens are to the side and back, and, as a rule, are surrounded by great brick walls with either iron spikes across the top or ferocious broken bottles cemented to the bricks. The windows, opening on the street, are kept shuttered closely, and iron bars give you to understand that there is no breaking into Charleston society by night or day. The corners of the houses, where the porches are, also are protected from possible interlopers by great iron spikes, a foot long and sharp enough to pierce the hide of a rhinoceros. The porches are also shuttered, partly to protect the inmates from the rude gaze of the passer-by and partly to protect them from the ruder gaze of the southern sun.
There was almost no one on the street. The Charleston men had gone to their places of business, leisurely to pursue a desultory living, and Charleston ladies do not go on the street in the morning, so we were afterwards told. We met several darkies crying their wares and saw an occasional housewife making a furtive purchase from some of these hucksters. These ladies, we judged, only came out because their establishments did not boast servants. As a rule, however, the old cooks seemed to do the buying.
The Charleston darky has a very peculiar lingo, so peculiar, in fact, that Tweedles and I found it difficult to understand. It is very different from the speech of our Virginia negroes. They seem to clip the words off very short, and their voices are lighter and higher than our colored people's.
A shrimp seller was very interesting to us. We did not know what he had or what he was calling, and followed him down the street trying to find out. He held up high on his open hand a great flat basket and he sounded as though he were trying to give a college yell:
"Rah, rah, rah, Shrimpy! Rah, rah, Shrimpy! Rah!"
"What on earth are you selling?" asked Dum.
"Rah shrimp! Rah shrimp! Buysome, Missy! Buysome, Missy!"
Then we saw his squirming wares and understood.
"But we couldn't do anything with raw shrimps," we declared regretfully.
"Well den, Missy lak nig sing fer heh?"